Heyy people! Now you can leave me a message about virtually anything!
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
One "Cool" Treatment
This is a recent sports event that reawakened the injury factor in football, occurring on the second Sunday of September (9/9/07). Kevin Everett, a former tight end for the Buffalo Bills, "suffered a fracture dislocation between the third and fourth cervical vertebra. So there was an injury to the cervical spine and cervical spinal cord. But the spinal cord was intact. There was disc material pushing on the cord and bone was applying pressure as well."
[http://www.buffalobills.com/news/news_5221.html]
In other words, he broke his back kind of like Johnny Cade did in "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton that we recently read in Lit class. After preforming a slew of medical tests and procedures on Everett, Dr. Andrew Cappuccino, an orthopedic surgeon, made a choice that was potentially life-threatening to Everett and definitely job-threatening to himself. Cappuccino decided to use an experimental method of spinal injury treatment...hypothermia. Cappuccino was first introduced to the hypothermia treatment, called "cold therapy," at a medical seminar in November 2006. It was a good thing he was at the seminar! The chilled temperatures of Everett's body would prevent further swelling and pressure on his spinal cord. However, hypothermia treatment could cause "heart arrhythmia, blood clotting problems, pneumonia, and organ failure."
[Sports Illustrated Magazine December 17, 2007--Kevin Everett, The Road Back by Tim Layden]
'How is a football player related to science?' you may ask. Well, it's not so much Everett's injury as the controversial hypothermia treatment. Some doctors believe that Everett's recovery was a miracle, not a scientific breakthrough. In fact, most doctors say that. But Cappuccino believed that hypothermia really did help save Kevin Everett's life. Whether hypothermia is an effective treatment for all spinal injuries is still a mystery. But one thing is for sure. Freezing half to death may have saved this man's life. He'll never play football again, but at least he's alive...and walking!!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Word Study Project
Check out my group's Word Study Project for Trimester 1! No stealing and enjoy ;-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
