Natasha Richardson dies skiing in Mont Tremblant...

rfarren":2sodzyvm said:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509586,00.html

Sounds weird... It was on a green, and didn't involve trees.
It said she fell and hit her head and suffered a likely epidural hemorrhage. What's so weird? Happens all the time in automobile accidents.
 
According to the articles it wasn't an very bad fall. I suppose this is just another reason to wear a helmet.
 
rfarren":o47quu2w said:
According to the articles it wasn't an very bad fall.
How, exactly, do we define "bad"? How did the reporters define "bad"? What does it matter how "bad" the fall was? Obviously, how ever she smacked her head, it was bad enough.
 
rfarren":16p8kbms said:
For all intensive purposes Brain Dead is dead.

That's "for all intents and purposes." :wink: Sorry to pick on you, but that's a pet peeve of mine, along with the misuse of "nauseous" instead of "nauseated." And FWIW, those reports of Richardson as "brain dead" are as yet unconfirmed. The reporting is all over the board right now.
 
rfarren":287m9mxs said:
"Tragic End", "Brain Dead" For all intensive purposes Brain Dead is dead.
Sorry if this is ghoulish, but my wife used to work for an organ procurement network -- she said that there's a very short window before a brain-dead person's organs being to deteriorate, even though he/she is clinically alive.

Apparently, she decided, for whatever reason, not to be an organ donor.
:x

LOL, Admin got to deliver the "intensive purposes" beatdown. That's one of my favorites too.
 
Admin":lzbb3g49 said:
rfarren":lzbb3g49 said:
For all intensive purposes Brain Dead is dead.

That's "for all intents and purposes." :wink: Sorry to pick on you, but that's a pet peeve of mine, along with the misuse of "nauseous" instead of "nauseated." And FWIW, those reports of Richardson as "brain dead" are as yet unconfirmed. The reporting is all over the board right now.


This is from an article of the events from the New York Daily News.
"The family has two options," said Dr. Philip Stieg, chairman of New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell's department of neurological surgery.
"You turn off the ventilator, the heart will stop beating, and that is it," Stieg said. Or, the family can keep her alive a bit longer "and allow them time to say goodbye."

The full article is here: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/ ... gathe.html

This from the times:
Throughout the day on Tuesday, there were conflicting reports about Ms. Richardson’s medical condition. La Presse, Montreal’s French language broadsheet, reported that a source at the hospital said that Ms. Richardson was in a "profound and irreversible coma." Other media outlets reported that she was on life support — and that, once in the United States, it would be withdrawn — while other news outlets said that she was brain dead.

Indeed this is unconfirmed, however, many news stories start out as "unconfirmed." We should change the topic to: Natasha Richardson seriously injures herself, may die, perhaps brain dead... WEAR A HELMET!

On a lighter note, is it possible that one of you could post the prices for Alta daily lift tickets since 2005.
 
On the subject of helmets. . . some interesting stats about helmet use, skier fatalities, brain injuries, and the effectiveness of recreational ski helmets here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0 ... debate/?hp

Some excerpts:

“The situation is sort of mixed,” said Jasper Shealy, a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology who has been tracking skiing and snowboard fatalities since the 1970s. “We’re now at the point where roughly half the population wears a helmet, and we’ve seen no difference” in fatalities.

But helmets do seem to make a difference in the head-injury statistics: Mr. Shealy’s own research found a 35 percent reduction, and he said that other studies had found as much as a 50 percent reduction in head injuries.

“Typically, in the scenario that results in death, you need something more than a helmet to save you,” Mr. Shealy said.

Helmets have been shown to protect the heads of recreational skiers traveling at a rate of 12 to 17 miles an hour, but typically not at higher speeds.

The most common arguments against helmets is that can be cumbersome and restrict vision, and that they give wearers a false sense of security, perhaps encouraging more reckless behavior.

“I’d be surprised if it didn’t lead to that,” Mr. Shealy said. “But that’s not a sufficient reason not to wear one.”

Troy Hawks, the spokesman for the National Ski Area Association, said it had adopted this policy: “We highly recommend that folks wear helmets,” he said, “but our position is that people should ski and snowboard as if they are not wearing one.”

Um... guilty as charged. After 30-odd years of skiing, I started wearing a helmet about five of six years ago. I've noticed that I take a lot more small branches to the head when skiing trees than I ever did without a helmet. Hmmm.
 
rfarren":2h4kvor3 said:
They really have raised the prices dramatically though!
Nice, you post about a tragic accident, then get distracted.

How about a little respect for the brain dead?
:-$
 
jamesdeluxe":2tkcbqst said:
Nice, you post about a tragic accident, then get distracted.

How about a little respect for the brain dead?
:-$

I'm sure that no disrespect was intended, neither by Rob nor myself. Thread drift is hardly a rare occurrence around here.

The :hijack: re: Alta ticket prices is now here: viewtopic.php?t=7861 TC
 
In the Robert Altman movie "Short Cuts," one of the stories was about this young kid who was knocked over by a car. Similar to what happened to Richardson, the driver, Lily Tomlin, tried to get him to go with her to a hospital, but he walked away and ended up dying (according to reports, she was just taken off life support).
 
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma -- a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.

Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.

Good grief. :roll:

What about if this happened at Sugarloaf? Mont Tremblant isn't in the middle of nowhere. Ste-Agathe-des-Monts is 30 minutes away and has fairly big size Hospital. The nearest Hospital is 40 miles away in Farmington.

The fact that she refused initial care didn't help the matter. No blaming on her, I guess many of us would just think "it's okay, I'm fineÉ attitude. I've done it in the past, not that it's smart...but I've done it.
 
Reading that is really heart-breaking. Had she had a helmet surely this may have been avoidable. I suppose she fell on the back of her head. I think this type of accident could happen simply walking to the lifts while slipping on ice. I'm not sure we should chalk this up to be a "ski accident." I think rather this is a freak accident that happened while she was on skis. I just don't understand... she was on the bunny slope. I mean, how fast could she have been going?
 
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