More Criminal Minds

[ginny_t]

Children of the Dark (304) pleased me quite a bit. We got to see a little more strength-to-cover-the-weakness.

The thing that really pleased me was Tyler. He reminds me of Nathan (Reid's troubled young man). Life is pretty much grooming both to be monsters, but they choose where they direct their destruction. Another for my growing list of storykinks.

And yay, Prentiss, wanting to ride to the rescue. (I've been reading matociquala's treatises; I couldn't escape the Arthur even if I wanted to.) Everything about that, Hotch's concern, Emily's reply, JJ's input, was all so very well done. *pleased*

Seven Seconds (305) pleased me inordinately. We saw a little bit of rationality from the freaked out parents--panicked but able to be talked down from it. (On the other hand, I would've been sorely tempted to reply to "why is the FBI here, then?" with "you would rather we weren't?" but that wouldn't have helped in the least.)

The confrontation between Emily and the aunt was wonderful. (Dear aunt: victim blaming for the lose.) Go Emily! She's showing a real protective streak these days.

I was a little bit "meh" on the miracle ending though. Because of reading matociquala, I got to thinking about time without oxygen to the brain. And then there's the part about the stats on CPR working (granted, they had more than that working for them). It seemed a bit like a pulled punch.

Comments

[lordshipmayhem.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the story said about CPR stats, but in the real world the highest survival rate for sudden cardiac arrest is when it's witnessed in hospital: 22%. Depressing, but true.

Outside of the hospital, if a bystander performs CPR, the chances of survival drop to a terrifying 4% to 6%, depending on method used (Cardiopulmonary @ 4% vs. Cardiocerebral at 6%.) Yes those numbers suck, but 4-6% is infinitely higher than the 1% of not performing CPR. That, BTW, assumes that CPR is continuous right through to arrival at the trauma centre.

And like me, you love your pets, so you'll be glad to know you can do CPR on them as well. The Wikipedia article I got those numbers from has a rather silly warning to not perform CPR on a dog or cat if it's awake as you run the risk of being bitten. If it's awake, I don't think it needs CPR.

(A couple of years ago my Uncle Claire coded in the Cardiac Care Ward at Sunnybrooke, resulting in an "heroic" code response. I do wish he was one of the 22%.)

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Show does indeed say that CPR recovery rates are single digit out in the field. Pretty depressing.

The ticker is a cranky old muscle sometimes. :-/

[scruloose.livejournal.com]

...and there's one key fact that all these CPR stats don't seem to be mentioning: CPR has to all intents and purposes no chance of reviving somebody. The idea behind CPR is life support. That is all. By blowing into the lungs, you get some oxygen into the blood, and by mashing away on the chest, you squoosh the heart enough to move a bit of that blood up into the brain, thus keeping brain damage and death at bay for a little while. Without a defibrillator to kick the heart into a proper rhythm, your patient isn't going to cough politely and wake up all of a sudden.

And on a related note, a defibrillator won't do much for somebody who has no heartbeat. Fibrillation is an irregular, spasming heart rhythm, and defibrillation has decent odds of shocking the silly muscle out of that... but if somebody's flatlined--without getting into crazy stuff like shots of stimulants straight into the heart muscles or something--he's dead, Jim.

My recent first aid instructor was full of such marvellous cheerfulness. He was also the one who told me that if you're doing CPR and you don't hear ribs snapping in the first couple of minutes, you're not doing it hard enough.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

I love people who are all "OMG, CPR cracked three ribs!" My response is "You can recover from cracked ribs. Death? Not so much."