Comments on: They say…

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 05:59:19 +0000

Mike – condolences on the loss of your brother.
“the hospital did the best they could” – one DiL is a nurse (just graduated last year – seems like an eternity ago), and we have other nurse friends.
They take patient care very personally.

By: Cicero

Cicero — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 18:58:25 +0000

Further to my 8:32pm comment yesterday, which was very anti-FDA, is today’s news is that FDA had to grant approval for Trump to receive an anti-COVID antibody infusion.
No one is above the FDA. No one.

By: Kate

Kate — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 18:33:08 +0000

Condolences, Mike. It’s an abiding truth that viruses, SARS-CO-2 and others, take out people who are already fragile. A dear friend of mine, with Stage 4 lung cancer, got an opportunistic infection and died last summer.

By: Cicero

Cicero — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 17:50:58 +0000

Mike:
I reluctantly comment on your description of your brother: untreated a.f.? Why untreated? So he could throw an embolus to his brain and stroke out? Cardioversion is so straightforward. If it fails, anticoagulate! Leaving it untreated is either patient refusal or medical malpractice.

Pneumonia that “never went away”= probable serious COPD, worsened by severe obesity, causing what we used to call “poor pulmonary toilet”, meaning an inability to get sputum up and out, leaving some airways blocked.

What was listed as Cause of Death on the certificate? Complications of COVID? Probably not.
Insufficiently declarative. but it’s a current journalistic trend.

RBG was reported to have died of “complications” of pancreatic cancer metastatic to her liver, a vital organ obviously. Hollywood people die of “complications” all the time. Unless RBG died of a terminal pneumonia, the cause of death on her certificate would read “Carcinoma of Pancreas Metastatic to Liver.”
People compiling vital statistics cannot use “Complications” as a cause of death, because it is useless. The leading causes of US deaths are heart disease, cancer, strokes.

By: neo

neo — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 22:47:39 +0000

Mike:

I’m very sorry for your loss.

By: Philip Sells

Philip Sells — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 22:18:21 +0000

I’m sorry to hear that, Mike. 🙁

By: MIKE GUENTHER

MIKE GUENTHER — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 22:09:52 +0000

My brother passed away from Covid complications. He had underlying conditions when he was hospitalized. A-Fib that didn’t get treated for over a year, pneumonia from two years previously that never completely went away and at 6′-3″ tall, he weighed 400 pounds.

He was being treated with remdisivir, steroids and the blood transfusion treatment. Also antibiotics for infection he got while in hospital. With his weight and preexisting conditions, it was probably a foregone conclusion that he wasn’t going to make it, although the hospital did the best they could.

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 19:16:10 +0000

Re: Obesity. Chris Christie has tested positive. He looks like he is at risk for a bad case.

By: Cicero

Cicero — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 18:48:08 +0000

Obesity in the management of COVID pneumonitis is an issue when the abdominal fat is bulky enough to interfere with respiration, whether ventilator-assisted or not. It is particularly bad in the prone position, a better position for sputum drainage, where the resulting increased intraabdominal pressure seriously limits diaphragm movement, thus increases pulmonary hypoventilation, and yields what medicine calls “respiratory embarrassment”.

Being overweight and being obese are two separate categories. Trump is a tall, large-bodied man. At 244 lb., he is no more than 40-50 lb +/- overweight, so he is not formally obese and does not have a BMI in excess of 30 (which is the formal definition of obesity). Not even close!

By: om

om — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 18:47:12 +0000

Hope that senators Lee, Johnson, and others also have quick recoveries as well.