I wonder if Natasha Richardson had an aneurysm — and what this says about the media *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Mar 17 2009 at 2:29 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
As you know, Natasha Richardson, who is the mother of two young children, is in critical condition. The story is that, because of a fall on the bunny slope at a ski resort, she suffered a brain injury and is now near death’s door. Reading the various reports, however, which have witnesses describe a little fall that saw no contact between head and ground, I’m wondering if the actual story is different from that being reported: Did Richardson suffer some sort of brain aneurysm that then caused her to fall? That would certainly be more consistent with the accident being now described.
I’m not deeply invested in Natasha Richardson, finding the story tragic only insofar as I’d find tragic any story about a loved wife and mother in critical condition. The story bothers me from another angle altogether, which is the media’s passionate attachment to a story line, even when additional information reveals that the story line may be illogical.
Here, when first reports came in, the only information was “fall, sickness, hospitalization.” That logically led to a conclusion that the fall led to the hospitalization. With more data — fall on the bunny slopes, no sign that she struck her head at all — one would think that the media would back of its original conclusion. Maybe the fall did cause the injury but, on the new facts, it’s just as likely that an organic problem caused the fall. I don’t know which is true, but I loath the media’s unwavering support for its original theory despite an increasing amount of evidence showing that their original conclusion is, at the very least, suspect.
And if you think this bears some relationship to the media’s sick commitment to global warming, despite a growing body of evidence that should cause them to question that commitment, you’re right.
UPDATE: Richardson has died. R.I.P.
The NY Times obit is already using her death as a platform for mandating helmets. As for me, I happen to love my ski helmet. My head and ears are always comfortable, which was never the case with hats, which made my head too hot and left my ears too cold.
Because of celebrity death stories, such as Sonny Bono and whats-his-name Kennedy, my husband I decided long ago that our family would wear helmets. But the important thing is we decided. The number of deaths is not so high that any government should be forcing skiers into helmets. And, as I said, I wonder if an autopsy (assuming they have one), will reveal that Richardson had a predisposition to bleeding that would take only a mild injury to trigger, or if death was from something other than a head injury.
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11 Responses to “I wonder if Natasha Richardson had an aneurysm — and what this says about the media *UPDATED*”
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“If it bleeds it leads”. “Good news is no news” etc.
I agree with you that aneurysm or blow from a fall, it doesn’t really matter if the outcome is the same. The difference is that an aneurysm is intrinsic, the fall might be able to be spun into a bigger story…how did it happen, was there an equipment failure, was it someone’s fault, will there be a lawsuit against the ski run….etc.etc.etc.
On loathing and media the following link:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20086.html
The media lack all professional standards. If a doctor aborted a baby and then stuffed a dead cat inside the womb, the doctor would get crucified. The media if they did the same thing in their profession? THey’d just shrug it off and get on with their operations.
They have no conscience because nobody holds them accountable. They do not have fear of any higher power. They lack all morality because they see themselves as the arbiters and executioners.
An aneurism is possible but if it were some kind of CVA that caused the fall, she’d have been in bad shape on presentation. A subarachnoid haemmorhage is also possible, but onset wasn’t fast enough and she isn’t described as having the characteristic sudden “thunderclap headache.”
Without a chance to examine her its impossible to say for sure, but odds-on it was a epidural bleed caused by the fall; the progress of it is consistent with intracranial bleeding leading to pressure, and epidurals tend to be faster than subdurals, although a subdural can’t be ruled out and the difference is pretty academic anyway for our purposes. Oddly, even a very apparently minor fall or head trauma can occasionally cause an intracranial bleed, and it’s more probable with age, dehydration, and (I think) altitude.
If it were an intracranial bleed, then knowing more about her treatment would be of interest; the treatment is straightforward if a little dramatic (“I didn’t really do anything except open her skull with a cold chisel”) and the differential diagnosis is easy (blown pupils, headache, nausea, increasing distress.) It does have to be done relatively quickly or else the intracranial pressure causes brainstem trauma.
Thank you for the info, Charlie. I’ve known (and known of) a few people who got kind of spaced, then felt normal, then complained of a headache, and then died. That’s why I found suspicious that a fall on a bunny slope without apparent head contact could cause this a massive, death-inducing head injury.
I’ve also known people who died from light head injuries that turned out to have triggered bleeds that were caused by inherent weaknesses in the brain. These poor people were an intercranial bleed waiting to happen.
My daughter in law had the good fortune to have an oncologist who asked her what her mother died of. It was from a berry aneurysm in the circle of Willis. The oncologist recognized this as an in heritable problem. He ordered an immediate MRI. She had three aneurysms that could have killed her. Since that time I have heard of at least four people who died of the same time aneurysm, all in their forties or fifties. She has had two brain surgeries and is awaiting the third. All with a good outcome, as was the breast cancer surgery and chem. This seems to be not as rare as we would wish.
People is reporting “doctors described it to those close to Richardson as ‘leakage of blood between the brain and skull’”.
This “transient nature of conditioned existence” thing sucks.
I’m wondering if she could have had altitude sickness also combined with the fall. Looked that up on the old search engine and there is info in Wikipedia for that. No one mentioned an elevation. It also mentioned that death is possible if altitude sickness is a possibility.She could have been brought down the mountain to fast but then maybe she wasn’t up that high.
Mike, I wondered the same thing, but the highest point in the neighborhood is just of 600 metres and the town is at 400 metres. That’s just short of 2000 feet and a little over 1300 feet (or about the height of the Empire State Building) respectively. Altitude sickness below 2000 metres is pretty durn rare, especially in a healthy adult.
“The NY Times obit is already using her death as a platform for mandating helmets”
See…that’s what I meant in #1…if she had died from a simple aneurysm, the tabloids would have just tch tched and that would have been the end. As it is, they have an “aha” moment, and a brand new campaign – safety helmets for all skiers. Mandated by law.
Of course, if the family sues the ski resort, the same effect may be the result, just required if you’re going to ski on their property. You still wouldn’t have a choice, but at least it’s still a personal choice by the resort, not mandated by law. If they get it mandated by law, then not only would you have a blow to the head and the resulting injuries, but you’d wake up to find a police officer next to your bed asking you to sign the ticket he just wrote for you. Adding insult to injury…
Hear, hear to #1 and #10. The story now has “legs” – famous person dies “needlessly” in tragic circumstances. A medical predisposition would have made that approach redundant.
The situation would be much the same if someone were to slip on an icy sidewalk and succumb to a head injury: it would prompt an outpouring of comments about the need to improve winter maintenance, and the possibility that the person was dead or dying (or at least in the initial stages of a life-threatening condition) before their head hit the deck would become secondary.