Sad loss of a young ski racer...

A snowHead

There have been a few articles on this tragic death over the past few days. When you watch kids race training on snow, having the occasional high speed crash, as a parent your heart is in your mouth regularly enough. This accident seems to be down to bad luck as much as anything. Ski racing is a dangerous sport.... children of 11 and 12 are already reaching 50 mph on some sections of a Super G, by 16 they're approaching 70 mph in a downhill - at those speeds a helmet will do little to prevent serious injury if you crash badly (cf Régine Cavagnoud).

Easy to understand summary by Martin Bell of the different disciplines for those less aware of the ins and outs....

Some thoughts on the dangers of shaped skis in racing...

A snowHead

PG, at one time she was a pupil of one of the trainers that attend Epicski...

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

That is such a sad report, so soon before her 18th and graduation.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Very sad. I first skied (badly) in Oregon, though I've only visited Mt Bachelor in high summer, and my teenage daughters are keen racers when they get the chance, so it's not the sort of thing one wants to read. If anyone reading this knew Shelley, sincere condolences.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

PG, such a nice girl and such bad luck. A seemingly simple fall causes unexpectedly serious injury. She vomits and inhales resulting in cardiac arrest. The Air Ambulance is not able to adequately deal with this scenario (why not?).
So often it seems the Good Guys get clobbered, while the Bad Guys sail through life invincible.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

Wow Physicsman, I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of you! (Monday morning or not).
I agree there are some aspects of this case that disturb me, but I wouldn't so readily start shouting malpractice.
Trauma is tricky. Trauma with head and facial injuries is even trickier. Transferring trauma patients by helicopter is very tricky. Trauma involving young sports celebrities is awful. Vomiting makes it a nightmare. Equipment often fails or is unavailable just when you need it.
I am sure lots of questions are being asked. I would like to know more details before starting any accusations.

Physicsman, As well as Jonpim's valid points, I would hesitate to place too much credence in a third-hand description of events reported in the press.

I thought pretty much the same thing as you when I first read the article, but felt that any comment would be inappropriate - it isn't entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that someone close to family might happen on this public forum, and I started the thread solely as an expression of sympathy...

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

You are, of course, both correct that I was "worked up" when I wrote the above. Isolated newspaper reports are indeed particularly error prone, and the issues that Jonpim raised are indeed valid.

In my defense:

1) I have an 11.5 y.o. daughter who, like Shelley, is a very good athlete, is also effectively being asked to decide between winter soccer and skiing, and whose personality sounds a lot like Shelley's. I have lots of the same memories that Shelley's dad recounted in that article.

2) In one of the two malpractice deaths of friends that I mentioned, I was at the hospital with my friend's wife when it happened. Bill went in for a routine procedure, had a condition well known to the doctors that was a strong counterindication for a particular drug. They didn't think about this, gave it to him, and 20 min later, my friend was dead. In the minutes following his death, they knew something was wrong, but still hadn't figured it out. Fortunately, one doctor briefly mentioned the name of the offending medication when I asked what medications Bill had been given. When we finally got home with his wife late that night, it was obvious that they had figured out what had happened, as there was a telephone message from the doctor that administered the medication saying that it was an unexpected reaction to a medication (which was complete and utter BS). Even after the lawyers got involved, and the counterindication pointed out in 1st year medical texts, the hospital still tried to deny our hypothesis for what had happened, and made it extraordinarily difficult for our team to get the actual records. Fortunately, my hypothesis was indeed correct, we prevailed, and the hospital settled out-of-court for a large sum (which effectively allowed Bill's kids to go to college). Of course, a provision of the settlement was that she couldn't talk about the details of the case or settlement.

The effect of this on me is that I have become very suspicious about how the medical industry will do almost anything within its power to cover up its errors. So, when I saw the mention of the lack of suction on the heli in just this one newspaper article out of hundreds on her death, it aroused my suspicions of a treatment error.

I actually considered whether or not to mention this possibility publicly. In fact, my wife and I had the same decision to make in terms of initially telling my friend's wife my theory for why he died. In the present case, because of Shelley's celebrity status, and the appearance of lack of adequate care, I would be very surprised if this possibility wasn't already being discussed by her family.

Tom / PM

PS - I have since learned that most medical helis carry multiple suction kits, usually including stationary, portable and manual handheld units, so it's hard to forget all three. My current guess is that the newspaper report was flawed/incomplete.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

FYI, lots more discussion on this topic here:

http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=148121#post148121

and here:

http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11532

Tom / PM

snow reports

Physicsman,

Physicsman, I have read the interesting posts on tetongravity.com. Thank you. And I am sorry about your friend, Bill. I am sure I would be angry too. But....

In the news here today is a nasty accident.
"The driver of a black BMW travelling southbound appeared to have lost control of his vehicle as it crashed through to the other side of the road"
Seven killed and four seriously injured. But nowhere do I see the suggestion the driver of the BMW was negligent.

All of us make errors all the time: some minor, some serious. To err is human .

I went out yesterday leaving a pan on the stove that boiled dry. When we got back there was a nasty stink in the house. There could have been a fire. We were lucky.

Also yesterday I pulled out to overtake on the motorway, but failed to notice a car in my "blind spot". Fortunately some prompt breaking and loud horn tooting meant only my dignity was injured. Again I was lucky.

I have given penicillin to two patients clearly documented as allergic. Fortunately only about 8% of those who say they are allergic actually are. (Your friend clearly was.). In my case both patients were fine, and I was able to tell them they were not allergic after all.

All of my colleagues have made similar mistakes. Mistakes are common and inevitable. On most occasions there is no adverese outcome. Sometimes disaster strikes. The only difference from the many so-called negligent doctors and me is luck.

That said, it was very wrong of the doctors in your case to lie and try to cover up what happened. In our hospital we would always go straight away to the family and explain honestly what had happened.
Dishonesty deserves all it gets.

You know it makes sense.

Jonpim - I didn't realize you were an MD. Thanks for offering your very reasonable perspective on this problem. You are absolutely correct that we would have been *much* less angry and frustrated if first the doctor, and then the hospital had been completely open with us throughout the process. In addition to the obfuscation attempts I mentioned previously, we were very concerned that this doctor would do the same thing to another family. The hospital refused to tell us what disciplinary steps were taken to prevent this. The messages that we were being sent couldn't have been clearer and included (a) "take the money and keep your mouth shut", and (b) "We have a closed community and discipline our own. You have no need to know what we did, and couldn't evaluate our actions even if we told you, so we won't".

BTW, there was one other point that I forgot to mention in my earlier post: By coincidence, an hour or two before Bill's demise, I happened to ride up the elevator in the hospital with two young doctors who were in animated, happy conversation. It was late in the summer on a Sunday night, and from their conversation, they apparently had both just completed some major milestone in their training, were within days of moving to a different hospital, and couldn't wait to get off duty to attend a party later that night. When the team came out to deliver the bad news about my friend, I realized that the individual who administered the medication that killed him was one of those two doctors. I always wonder if he would have made that mistake if he wasn't feeling quite so full of himself, distracted, and anxious to get off duty.

I've gone on for far too long about a non-skiing topic, and not even mentioned the medical incident that caused my second friend's death, and several other very serious but non-fatal medical mistakes just in my own family in the past decade. I don't know if this apparent epidemic of medical mistakes that I've personally observed is representative of medical practice in general, or is an observational quirk, but I can tell you that this spate of bad experiences has made me extremely cautious and pessimistic about the current state of medical art.

Thanks for letting me vent on this topic.

Tom / PM

PS - BTW, for the past seven years, I have been with a biotechnology company and have had quite a few MDs and MD/Ph.D.s as colleagues and friends, so it certainly is not my intent to slam the profession as a whole - just remind the marginally competent clinicians of the huge responsibility that they have taken on themselves.

Help!!

Sad loss of a young ski racer...

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