Wednesday 23 May 2018

Likely story

I read a little story on the internet some time back (and because it was on the internet, it simply must be true) about a young man who was brought to the trauma bay (not mine) after being shot, and though he definitely looked like he was up to no good, he claimed he was shot while waiting for his grandmother to pick him up to take him to church.  No one in the trauma bay believes his ludicrous story, of course, until Grandma shows up a short while later in her Sunday Best, looking for her grandson to take him to church.

We often joke about what nefarious deeds our trauma patients have been perpetrating immediately preceding their injuries, and I have no idea if that vignette is true, but whether you believe it or not, it makes for a great fucking story.  This story is kind of like that.

Not really.

Mondays are supposed to be slow, easy trauma days.  After all, the Call Gods should be exhausted after harassing the unlucky weekend trauma surgeons for 72 straight hours (Friday counts as a weekday in the Call God Calendar for some damned reason), but this Monday was most definitely not easy.  The chaos started exactly 2 minutes after I walked through the door (fall), and it continued with a new fall or car accident or motorcycle crash every 30 minutes or so for the next 10 hours.  For a while it appeared that I would break my personal record for trauma patients in one shift, but finally right around dinner time it slowed down, giving me just enough time to shovel a cold hamburger (leftover from lunch) into my face before my pager started screaming again:

level 1 GSW 5 minutes

God damn it.

Exactly 12 minutes later (damned rush hour) Ryan (not his real name™) rolled through the door.  Screaming.

Sigh.

"Hi Doc, this is Ryan.  19 years old.  We've found 3 gunshot wounds - one to the right upper chest, looks like an exit wound in the right upper back, and one in the right hand.  Vitals stable, decreased breath sounds on the right.  Got two large bore IV's in his AC's."

"AH GOD DAMN MY HAND DAMN GOD DAMN"

I knew at once Ryan and I would get along swimmingly.

On my initial assessment, his breath sounds sounded clear and equal to me (I don't know how the hell the medics hear anything in those ambulances with the sirens wailing), so I doubted he had a pneumothorax (collapsed lung).  He indeed had a gunshot wound to the anterior right shoulder and a corresponding wound (entry? exit?) in the back of the shoulder.  Fortunately he was moving his shoulder and arm perfectly and had a bounding radial pulse, so I seriously doubted the bullet hit his humeral head or the neurovascular supply to the arm (which is much closer to the armpit).  His hand, on the other hand (har har har) was Seriously Fucked Up.

X-rays confirmed that he had no injury to the bones of the shoulder and no pneumothorax, but what he did have were several broken bones and lacerated tendons in his hand.  As I was consulting the hand specialist, I overheard Ryan giving his story to the police:

"I was sitting in my kitchen eating dinner when I heard a bunch of shots outside, and I guess a couple of them hit me."

Yeah, sure you were, Ryan.  I wonder if they actually expect anyone to believe this bullshit story.

After I patched Ryan up temporarily until the hand specialist could come in, I went back to reassess the last 172 traumas (or so it seemed) who had come in that day, suture up some lacerations, and discharge a few who had managed to sober up.  About 3 hours later I was finally nearly caught up when my pager went off again:

level 1 GSW 7 minutes

GOD DAMN IT.  IT IS FUCKING MONDAY, CALL GODS!

We cleared the trauma bay and readied ourselves for the next young man who was about to arrive.  Or at least we thought we did.

The 67-year-old woman who rolled through the door was not what we were expecting.  Nor did she really look like she had been shot.

"Hey Doc, this is Doris (not her real name™).  She was sitting in her kitchen eating dinner with her grandson a few hours ago when a bunch of bullets came through the window.  I think her grandson was brought here earlier, wasn't he?  Anyway, she has one gunshot wound to the left buttock.  No exit wound.  Bleeding is controlled."

Uh . . .

Ahem.  Hm.

I assessed Doris while eating some serious crow, and all I found was a single wound with the bullet retained in her rather voluminous left buttock.  A CT scan confirmed no serious injuries, and a short while later she was walking upstairs to visit her grandson.  I, on the other hand, had several days of making rounds on Ryan and Doris (who was always there visiting) to remind me just how stupid and wrong my stupid and wrong preconceived notions usually are.

If you're wondering about the three hour delay, Doris initially decided to forgo medical treatment when the medics arrived to pick up Ryan because, as she explained it, her wound wasn't really bleeding, she was walking normally, and she thought a few paper towels would do the trick.  And she was probably right.

Anyway, I guess this story proves once again what happens when you make an assumption: it makes an ass out of you and umption.  Or something.  Whatever, I just need to get some goddamned sleep.  Fuck you, Call Gods.

91 comments:

  1. Gotta wonder what they ate. Steak? Pork? Stew?
    And you gotta have some serious bad luck to be shot when inside your house (that or it was a gang drive by. Who knows?)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whenever I hear a story about super bad luck, it makes me think of the poor Brazilian man who was killed while lying in bed when a cow fell through his roof.

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    2. A few years back in Boston, we had a woman riding with her husband through one of the Big Dig tunnels when one of the massive ceiling panels came loose from its bolts, and all several thousand pounds of it came crashing down onto her side of the car. She died instantly; he had barely a scratch on him. From all accounts, she was a lovely person, and her poor husband was totally devastated. There was another incident involving a manhole cover that was somehow sent flying on the highway and that went crashing through a different woman's windshield, with the same fatal results. Not quite as bizarre as having a cow fall through your bedroom ceiling, but equally bad luck.

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    3. we had a local woman killed by a flying rock on the road. (some time back) the only guess was that the rock had gotten pinched between the dual rear wheels on a truck, and then worked its way free and been flung. more personally, Mrs Ken came home and said "you need to glue the mirror back on the windshield for me" - the windshield which now had about a 6 inch bullseye break from a flying rock.

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  2. I'm wondering at the lack of any other GSWs in the story. either someone was a bad shot, someone was shooting at the wrong house, or the intended victim never got to meet doc.

    I also wonder if Doris' last name is Gump.

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  3. as for the ambulance, the box really does shut out the siren noise pretty well, but it is still not a good environment for precise listening.

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  4. My guess: Drive-by, Ryan was the target.

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    Replies
    1. Not necessarily; gang members or other criminals aren't always the brightest lights on the Christmas tree, and, like many parcel delivery services, often get their addresses mixed up. Plenty of innocent people have been killed, injured, or just barely missed being shot in drive-bys over the years, including young children and infants. Either way, if at all possible, Ryan and Grandma should perhaps look into moving...

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  5. Sighh, so the weekend which starts on Thursday for us and finally subsides mid evening Sunday decided- "fuck yo regularly scheduled programming"..
    Three companies decided to dump their lines on us everyday when we typically have them during graveyard, and so the shit show kicked off.. Thursday was some what peaceful, maybe a lil less call volume but we had the man power ready if it did it's normal, but it did not..
    Cometh friday, I was in tears by 10pm (didn't help a friend died), I was ready to just walk away and let the world implode, I survived.
    I swear it's one of the few jobs where you loathe Friday and Saturday night and don't dare say it because call God's will make you hate your life, when we hear someone say "oh I can't wait for Friday to get here, we always respond with, "this the one job no one looks forward to Friday".
    Sunday rolled around and it was worse than Friday and Saturday, and then it bleed over to Monday.. all I gotta say is how many assholes in the Nashville area going to lock their keys in the car, you would think after the first 500, they would have ran out of stupidity.. I got 8 calls for door unlocks in 15 minutes, that's just 15 minutes of the 4 hours we had them..
    Fucking Monday we have a skeleton crew because it's our slower day, 15 police calls in a matter of 20 minutes proved me wrong, by midnight I was so wound up from the bullshit I looked strung out from stress and watching my little cubicle world burn to the ground. And when I'm stressed I talk a mile a minute and my voice gets a little higher (a lot higher)..
    Monday was a gold mine for the call God's shit show.. My job is no where near as stressful as the docs, I'll put that out there..
    I only dispatch for thirty companies and each one has 1-3 police rotations, and it gets hairy especially with thick southern ass accents..
    Bums have taken to opening our office doors and asking for things, so I'm not too happy with that. I'm already a walking talking mess of stress and then that bullshit, I'm so over it..
    I am looking for a new job. I can handle intense, I can handle stating busy, but I refuse to be called a bitch because the ahole is tired and wants to stay home and sleep and doesn't want to do his police calls, we are forced to call owners to tell them their operator is turning down police calls and the owner usually erupts, and I'm tired of being that bitch in the middle..
    The drunk drivers have the lamest fn excuses, I was minding my own business and that car parked in a driveway jumped out at me and I had to drive off and the other cars ganged up on me on the way down the block so I left my car.. im with you doc, I have become real cynical and a pessimist when people start giving excuses, once and only once has someone told me the truth and I thought it was total bullshit..

    Thanks for letting me vent, my ADHD is flaring up tonight..

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    Replies
    1. I developed the habit of having a backup key on my person years ago, and now I have my key and my keyfob separate, so I can lock my key in the ignition and still let myself in.

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  6. I think we could all use a good laugh right now. Have you heard about the so-called homeopath who is selling audio of recordings he made by placing vials of homeopathic liquids in an electrified wire coil and recording the noise that was emitted. From the LA Times: "The healing power of the liquid, he said, was transmitted into the sound waves he captured." The Calfornia Medical Board isn't buying it and is going after this quack.

    http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-doctor-license-threat-20180524-story.html

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    Replies
    1. Im sad to even be in the same state as this nutjob

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    2. I've heard the same story from another person believe it or not. it must be a thing in homeopathy to use vials of liquids and sound waves

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    3. I'm familiar with the concept of the magic memory water, but the sound waves are new to me.

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  7. doc? have you heard about the scam out of hyderabad where furniture thieves pose as a moving company?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whatever do you mean they seem like a totally legit company whats wrong with advertising on random blogs?

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  8. What happened to doc bastard?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. good question - he's usually a bit quicker to delete spammers.

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  9. And a lot faster at blogging. This is unusual.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. he's been a bit slower these past few months. hopefully it just means he has been busy with family and not that he is losing interest in his storytelling.

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    2. Starting to get a little worried.
      Honestly reading his stories has been such a huge part of my routine for so many years now it feels weird not being able to read one in so long

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    3. He's still tweeting, so he's presumably fine.

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    4. hopefully this doesn't mean somebody found a cure for stupid...

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    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    6. Well ken is (insert politician here) still alive? Yes? Then stupid hasnt been cured.

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    7. When some cure stupid, a better stupid come along :D

      Al

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  10. Nooooooooooooooooo.
    Please, no cure for stupid, outbreaks of sanity are bad for my mental wellbeing.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I dare him to come back soon before we end up asking a bunch of really crazy, out there, and quite outlandish and hilarious medical questions we can come up with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. does John's head count as a RFO?

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    2. if we were to attempt therapy, would we need a psychiatrist or a proctologist?

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  12. (Dials 9-1-1)
    Hello? Id like to report a missing person. Weve not heard from him in a month.
    No i dont know where he lives. No not even the country.
    His name? His name is Docbastard...hello? You still there?
    I think theyll get right on the case.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Dials 911 again
    "Hello? What's your emergency?"
    Hello? Ma'am my favorite blogger is missing! He needs help right away!
    What seems to be the problem?
    I think he has a rectal foreign object and I have reason to believe he may be doing his own trauma surgery.
    Uh.. ok? What is his address?
    I dont know.
    Uh.. ok.. is in his rectum?
    John! Help! I'm sure its painful!
    Ok maam, we are trying to help.
    What is your friends name?
    Doc Bastard!
    You do realize it's illegal to prank 911 right?
    But ma'am... I'm not.. why are the police here? But ma'am? Ma'am!

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  14. Look... we've bored ourselves Doc.

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  15. What in the bloody stool is going on? Who lost the doc? I don't have a Twitter to tweeter him, and if I have to make a Twitter I'm scared of the sheer amounts of stupidity I will have to see to find him, I deal with enough stupidity at work. Sighh someone get a missing sign and lets take it over to Twitter..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah. Ok for missing posters we need a photo, last known location, and know his closest relatives
      Well shit.

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    2. Please don't make me go to twitter-verse. I may not make it out alive.

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    3. Lol Connor, all it has to say is last seen on docbastard.net in May and we will use some horrible rectal object picture. And we can pretend to be his family, like the people that pretend to be family to see someone in ICU..

      Cannan someone has to suck it up and go, I'm a virgin. Where is Ken, Ken is use to being first out, I am use to being last called out, and that requires me to be behind my desk and send someone else, kinda like umm this.. Connor go get the doc off Twitter, tell him we are sorry for whatever we have done and miss him..

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    4. No no, NO WAY am i going to that insane asylum that is twitter

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    5. Make Ken do it, he is a fighter and has testicular fortitude..

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    6. Huh. So i logged on to the twitter account i hadnt touched since 2012 and turns out someone had apparently at least at some point used it to boost other peoples followings. 300 following. No retweets. Thankfully id used a different password on that. Fun fact one of the ones it was folling before i unfollowed everyone and deleted the account just now was for homeopathic medecine. Mostly followed arabic chinese and random people on twitter

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    7. I am not a twit. I have no intention of becoming a twit.

      that aid, Cali, we set a performance benchmark at an undisclosed time in the recent past: three car injury MVA fully blocking the road. dispatch to EVERYTHING gone was 61 minutes.

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    8. Thats it we should start our own blog! With blackjack! And hookers!
      In fact, forget the blog!

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    9. Lol Connor when your password is password you become a homeopathic antivaxxer..
      Nicely done Ken! That's not bad at all especially it being a triple.. I went on two single roll overs (Sunday night) and it took an hour just to get them on the road and rolled over.
      I'll make a Twitter and go see what the doc is up to and report back, it give me something to do while I sit at my Dr. Office

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    10. It wasnt password.
      It was password123 GIVE ME A LITTLE CREDIT
      Also doc has been posting regularly on twitter. Why not here, who knows?

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    11. I told him you were touching spammer links and eating carpet goobers Connor..

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    12. I only do that on tuesdays. And aw shit i missed my 3 o'clock appointment for carpet goober eating

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  16. Connor made it to Twitter and back. You can do it! Show Ken that your testicular fortitude is up for a challenge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm a twitter virgin too! Idk the different in a tweet and a twit! That can't be right.

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    2. the twit makes the tweet.

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  17. Maybe his wife told him off for being a Docbastard

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  18. Well then that settles it, I'm not a twit. Whew.

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  19. I am a wife and all husbands are bastards of some sort. But Doc Bastard has a ring to it. Machoistic. Smart assey. Seems kind of like a fun guy to know in real life, after all she did make little bastards with him. He just might be adorbs, in a contankerous, grumpy, no BS, sort of way.. you never know!

    ReplyDelete
  20. I got respect for that Canaan.. I called my husband a stupid bastard the other day.. He bitched about traffic and then did what everyone he was bitching about..

    So I twittered the twitteringbastard.. hopefully he will find his way home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now i just imagine us all as family guy style babies standing around with our thumbs in our mouths saying "i cant find my blogger"

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  21. We can't find our blog-bastard!

    **all points bulletin for super grouchy, tyrant, foul mouthed blogger, who has amazing stories to tell, last seen inside of twitter-verse. We're sure he is being held hostage because, well I mean, we are more loyal and more entertaining! And less hostile! If seen, please tell him we miss him and (fake cries) tell him we just want him back**

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whatever you do! Please don't hurt him! And if you do, shove something in his butt because that will make a good story.:) but really... don't.

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  22. this just in: Jahi is now all the way dead. I'm sure nothing else has changed, however.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The corpse finally died? Wait isnt that an oxymoron?

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    2. We have the technology. BTW, it's gonna be a while for DB to start posting hereagain. Something to do with HIPAA violation. Images.

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    3. Oh thats nice john. Hows your head-from-ass removal going?

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    4. oh, look, someone's trying to tie doc to a geographic location, again.

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  23. For real on the Jahi dead-dead thing, Ken?

    That is utter BULLSHIT if that is the case of some troll being trolly to our Doc Bastard. Pisses me off. :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Her corpse is no longer on machines. She "died" during surgery...or since she was brain dead would it be autopsy?

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    2. Now I am reading 18,000 different articles with 75 different ways she actually died or became deadererer.

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  24. Internal bleeding and kidney issues is what I read after several surgeries is what ultimately killed her uh, corpse. Wow, what a weird statement to make. The article said her brain would be donated to be studied by scientists. But her cause of death-death was just 'bleeding'
    I'm curious how they got a hospital to do surgery on a dead patient. Or several surgeries.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What do you knowabout internal bleeding.

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    2. More than you john. More than you.

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  25. No she's really dead. Pronounced. During or aftermath of unspecified surgery. Excessive bleeding, so the story goes, and liver failure. Who knows.... I came here hoping for a post on it from Doc Bastard, but...

    ReplyDelete
  26. Well, now Jahi may now finally rest in peace.

    ReplyDelete
  27. How can the hospital CHO, Rosen, Fisher, and their incompetent medical staff sleep at night, knowing full well that that somebody screwed up. When you have a surgeon not showing up before, during, or after the code, that's the definition of medical negligence. They know damn well that Jahi's life was worth 250K when she started her post-tonsillectomy bleed in the unit. They got away with murder.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And also didnt they use a suction tube device they were explicitly told Not to use themselves?

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    2. Ken lol.. just lol.. They know how to talk and type but they don't know how to listen or read.. Ken that's the best piece you have ever wrote

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    3. Bravo, Ken. Lol I believe you deserve an award for the most sincere comment, meant from your heart and the most use of the F word in two paragraphs.

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    4. yes, connor, they did, and if you know where to look, you can probably find video of G-suc bragging about it.

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    5. Cali & Canaan: you don't think I was too polite?

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    6. Ken read my retort back to one of the Johns on the newest blog, Doc will probably yell at me and tell me to be civil..
      But yours Ken, that's a master piece, I enjoyed it and have read it three times now.. I applaud your writing, I wanted to add a for fucks sake to it.

      and Canaan I got the flu right after going to Twitter and I think butt herpes, three days of the most ghastly puking half to death at work. eemm, no, doc disappears on us again- I ain't going back to Twitter to snitch on Connor for breaking things..

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    7. Cali dont try to throw me under the bus. The only thing i broke was johns legs. (Hears groaning from basement dungeon) well ok he said his name was henry but i Think his last name started with a B?

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    8. that would be funny if Johnny achieves immortality by becoming the slang term for an idiot who pretends to be competent on the internet.

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    9. Oh man, butt herpes. Connor, how dare you...

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    10. Ken, don't be a Johnny! It does have a ring to it.

      Delete
  28. Holy crap just got the alert about the article 3 minutes ago, apparently she fully died again for the second time on June 22.. Jesus I feel evil because I don't have the proper terminology..

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  29. At first I was relieved. Then it set in, this child, has died 2.0 finally over for her and she can rest. And it became oddly sad to me. Maybe not oddly, she is a child. But the whole thing, in retrospect, is sad for Jahi.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Technically if you count june 22nd as her date of death if she was born earlier in the year she technically died as an adult.

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    2. She died a child. An innocent victim in this mess left behind, regardless of the last 5 years. She will be laid to rest an adult. I don't see the point in her mother trying to get her death certificate changed, for the sake of just a date on a piece of paper. It is a waste of precious time her other children need. It will never make a difference in Jahi's life and/or death(s). In the end, her mother and family are now forced to begin the grieving process they should have begun when she was 13. That's no easy feat. I've been there, burying my own child. I can't help but feel just a little sympathy for them. Call me soft hearted now that its finally over.

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    3. if the certificate has the original deathdate, Jersey can claim their expenses out of any settlement.

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    4. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I'm sure there are tons of intricacies in this case I will never think of.
      I guess that is why I am no lawyer.

      Delete

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