We’ve seen it so many times. A young, handsome man rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound. A flurry of white coats racing the clock: CPR, the heart zapper, the order for a scalpel. Stat! Then finally, the flatline.
This is Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider’s biggest pet peeve. Where are the TV scripts about the elderly grandmothers dying of heart failure at home? What about an episode on the daughter still grieving her father’s fatal lung cancer, ten years later?
“Acute, violent death is portrayed many, many, many times more than a natural death,” says Ungerleider, an internal medicine doctor and founder of End Well, a nonprofit focused on shifting the American conversation around death.
Don’t even get her started on all the miraculous CPR recoveries where people’s eyes flutter open and they pop out of the hospital the next day.
All these television tropes are causing real harm, she says, and ignore the complexity and choices people face at the end of life.
Using a single punch as a quick way to knock someone out and they’re just fine when they wake up is my pet peave. Any hit hard enough to cause a blackout is likely to bring long term damage.
I used to fight professionally in my youth (muay Thai). I’ve seen people out cold a good few times and every time they were up and walking minutes later. Concussed for sure but otherwise fine.
The worst I had was an 8 count from a head kick where I couldn’t remember after the fight if I’d won. Kept asking my wife. I felt mentally foggy for a while but was fine within about two weeks.
My sister has a few years she can’t really remember resulting from a series of concussions. Head injuries shouldn’t be treated casually.
Apologies, that wasn’t my intent. I was just trying to get across that people do get moving quickly after being knocked out. It’s usually caused by a sharp drop in blood pressure (that’s why chin shots are so effective, it momentarily cuts off blood supply) so folks do get up quickly after it.
Concussions are serious. I had a rule that I would stop fighting after my third because your chances of suffering depression later in life or lasting damage after 3 increases quite dramatically after that. Luckily for me I got too old first. :)
Well… Did you win?? Don’t leave us hanging!
Oh haha, sorry. I actually managed to scrape a draw!
Yep, hockey here. Head met ice and I saw birds at one time. Only out for a few seconds, definite concussion, but I’m alright. For the most part.