.....starting on page 141.....I paraphrase: (speaking of the deteriorating situation inside the pitch black cabin of a capsized fishing trawler)....it seems the urge not to breathe underwater is so strong that it generally will overpower the misery of running out of air. It really doesn't matter how much he needs to breathe, he will not inhale until he is near losing consciousness. There's so much C02 in the blood at this point, supplanting oxygen, that there are chemical triggers in the brain that command involuntary breath regardless of if he is under water or not. This is something called the 'breakpoint', and experiments indicate the 'breakpoint' to occur after 87 seconds.....(I wonder who that poor sucker was.....-ed), Described as a neurological optimism, sort of as if your body was saying, "holding our breath is going to kill us, and maybe breathing will not kill us.....how 'bout it?" Junger goes on to say that if that fella hyperventilates first -like free diver do-and you can bet I would be.....that break point can come as late as 140 seconds. What the hyperventilation does is to flush out the C02 out of the system and it therefore takes longer to reach critical levels.... Anyway, until the 'breakpoint' the person is engaging in 'voluntary apnea'.....that is, choosing not to breathe. (the next passage is too well written for me to screw it up paraphrasing it--screw it!) "Lack of oxygen to the brain causes a sensation of darkness closing in from all sides, as in a camera aperture stopping down. The panic of a drowning person is mixed with an odd incredulity that this is actually happening. Having never done it before, the body-and the mind-do not know how to die gracefully. The process is filled with desperation and awkwardness, "So this is drowning" a drowning person might think. "So this is how my life finally ends". ("where the hell is my PFD"?-ed) Along with the disbelief is an overwhelming sense of being wrenched from life at the most banal, inopportune moment imaginable, "I can't die, I have tickets to next week's game" is not an impossible thought for someone who is drowning. The drowning person may even feel embarrassed, as if he's squandered a great fortune. (Get it? I'm talkin' to you my lambie........use your PFD,.... if you're hot, get a drink of water, not a breath of water), (......sorry, -ed). ..........The drowning person may feel as if it's the last, greatest act of stupidity in his (ended) life." (back to my muddled paraphrase)......Not to worry these thoughts only last the minute or so that you have air reserves.....(if you had a PFD on, your head would be above water and none of this applicable -ed), by the time the first involuntary breath happens you are still conscious, that's a good thing, because there is only one thing on earth more unpleasant than running out of air........you guessed it!......breathing in water (considering that water is 800 times denser than air there should be some considerable discomfort involved also -ed).....anyway NOW you're really getting into the hang of drowning! Spasmodic breath drags water into the mouth and windpipe, and one of two things happens (you can't choose, the choice has been made for you), ten percent of folks....just regular folks......mariners....fisherfolk......oh,......say KAYAKERS, water--or anything touching their vocal cords will trigger your muscles about your larynx to contract. Your central nervous system makes the call that something in the voice box is more of a threat than low oxygen levels, and takes action. Ta Da! Laryngospasm! (can you say laryngospasm?........sure you can! -Mister Rodgers) This is so powerful that it overcomes the breathing reflex.......you suffocate......autopsy reveals .......(oh wait a minute--never mind--no autopsy--they never recovered your body.....you weren't wearing a PFD.....were you? You are presently lower than whale shit on the bottom of Marianna's Trench aren't you?-ed), ...not a drop of water in your lungs! Those were the lucky ones.......the other ninety percent --here's what you get to look forward to----- water will flood your lungs and summarily end any limp oxygen transfer to your bloodstream....."half conscious and enfeebled by oxygen depletion, the person is in no position to fight his way back to the surface". " The very process of drowning makes it harder and harder NOT to drown, an exponential disaster curve similar to that of a sinking boat." Every now and again someone makes it back from this shady little stroll.......that's how we know what it feels like. Back in 1892 a Scottish doctor named James Lowson was on a steamer to Ceylon, ran into a typhoon, most of the 150 souls on board went down--the ship sank under the doc's feet- dragging him down -the last thing he remembered was losing consciousness- a few minutes later.....the buoyancy of his life vest, (son of a bitch--the PHD was wearing a PFD!) shot him to the surface and eventually washed him onto the shore of an island. The good doctor writes in part: " The ship was going down rapidly, and I was pulled down rapidly struggling to extricate myself. I got clear underwater and immediately struck out to reach the surface, only to go farther down. ......It seemed as if I was in a vice which was gradually being screwed up tight until it felt as if the sternum and spinal column must break." Anyway Lowson guessed that laryngospasm prevented water from entering his lungs while he was unconscious and in the great glub. Now for the rest of you mutts.....the other ninety percent: "Water in the lungs washes away a substance called surfactant, which enables the alveoli to leech oxygen out of the air. The alveoli themselves, grape like clusters of membrane on the lung wall, collapse because blood cannot get through the pulmonary artery. That artery has constricted in an effort to get blood to areas of the lungs where there is more oxygen. They don't exist. The heart labors under critically low levels of oxygen and beats erratically-- 'like a bag full of worms' --as one doc put it. Yep, you guessed it---ventricular fibrillation. And of course, the more irregular the heart beats the less blood gets pumped and the faster life functions decay. Kids (your kids DO wear PFDs on the water, don't they?), they have proportionally stronger hearts than adults can maintain their heartbeats for up to five minutes without air. Adults check out faster. After several minutes....there's no movement of the heart at all. Only the brain is alive. (Charming, no?-ed) Now, your central nervous system hasn't a clue what happened to it's perfectly good body.....it's issuing orders that are not being obeyed....."Breathe", "Pump!"......the body can't obey. If you were defibrillated at that moment, you might possibly survive. When cold water touches the face......an impulse travels along the trigemial nerve to the central nervous system and lowers the metabolic rate. Your pulse slows down to where it's needed the most -- heart and skull...... (come on......you've all played that one on the piano with your cousin at some point in your life---everybody has!-ed) This is sort of a temporary hibernation that drastically reduces the body's need for oxygen. But this really doesn't concern you---you're still fumbling with the deck bungies-aren't you? I really do recommend this book highly.....it's not all tongues and thumbs. There is a lot of really interesting hydrology in it (did you know that the highest theoretical wave is somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 feet? Or that a pilot house window on the Queen Mary was once broken by a rogue wave? That pilot house sits 90 feet above the water line...... Or that waves have the power to rip those containers on those container ships that I see all the time coming and going out of the Savannah river, in mid ocean storms as if they were a sardine can.......and no one knows HOW?) Great book. The Perfect Storm--Sebastian Junger Norton press. Now........how 'bout that PFd? Pretty pleeze? If I've made some of you mad.......you can come to Savannah and take a poke at me.....You'll know me.......I'm the one wearing a PFD> Sandykayak_at_aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 8/8/99 12:34:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > chriskayak_at_earthlink.net writes: > > << I swear I'm going to reprint (in paraphrase, darling Jackie, so as to > circumvent copyright restrictions), Sebastian Junger's chapter in The Perfect > Storm on the > bio-mechanics of drowning--- from a clinical standpoint >> > > Please do for those of us who don't have the book > > Sandy Kramer *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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