Recantory Case Studies

On the morning of December first of two thousand and twelve, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher took a .40 caliber gun and shot his girlfriend 22 times inside his master bedroom. He then drove down to Arrowhead Stadium, the Chief’s home stadium, to express his appreciation to his team’s general manager and coach for everything they had done for him, walked away, and then shot himself in the head. This tragic recollection of the murder-suicide case executed by the 25 year old football player paints him as a monstrous and willfully violent man but what if one was to acclaim all of these fatal incidents to too many bumps in the head? Well it has been. Years after this incident, after medical examiners conducted an autopsy on Belcher and they found that his brain showed signs of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease caused by repetitive traumatic head injuries, also denoted as concussions. There have been many documented cases where after contact sport athletes experience excessive concussions, they then seem to develop a seemingly new character as they come to be ill fully violent, overtly aggressive, or even deeply depressive. Many times this may lead to the diagnosis of a mental disorder or may end tragically, as in Belchers case, in the death of others and/or the athletes themselves.

In the beginning of 2005 a concussion scandal had rocked both the National Football League (NFL) and the sports world alike, resulting in news outlets from the medical journal Neurosurgery to The New York Times reporting on some aspect of the situation. By 2009, almost everything that was known about the concussion issue was published and made known to the public. However one story was left in obscurity, and that was the story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, told by author Jeanne Marie Laskas in the novel Concussion. Through Laskas’ narration in the novel and employment of strategies such as characterization, conflict, and point of view, she is able to present new information and different perspectives on an already well investigated subject.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Habersham County, Tom was feeling slightly nervous as he exited the staff lounge and entered the hustle and bustle of County Hospital’s ER to begin his first shift as an RN. The first few hours of his shift passed slowly as Tom mostly checked vital signs and listened to patients complain about various aches, pains, coughs, and sniffles. He realized that the attending physician, Dr. Greene, who was rather “old school” in general about how he interacted with nursing staff, wanted to start him out slowly. Tom knew, though, that the paramedics could bring in a trauma patient at any time.

Concussion is the true gripping story of one man’s decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar business. Nigerian pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu works at the coroner’s office in downtown Pittsburgh. Here he made a discovery in the body of one of the greatest football players ever to play the game, Mike Webster. He suffered a decline in his body and started to act very strange by living out his car and tasering himself till he was unconscious so he can go to sleep; he was only fifty years old. Omalu discovered that Webster had a disease caused by multiple blows to the head from his football career, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), which could affect everyone playing the game. Omalu felt that everyone should know of this and the harm

Shells and bullets whiz past the soldiers heads. Boom, a bomb goes off in no man’s land. Fellow comrades have been hit and are bleeding as if they were a spout. Whiz boom, more explosions come and go all day. Who will be hit next? This is the daily life of a soldier in World War I. Other than the physical challenges, one of the hardest parts of being a soldier was surviving with an amount of sanity. To maintain their sanity many soldiers created physiological defense mechanisms to defend their mind set and emotional state. In the war novel All Quiet on the Western Front the main character, Paul, and his company use these physiological defense mechanisms to maintain sanity by forgetting, not thinking, and joking, about the atrocious

The following case study addresses the care I provided to a patient who was brought in by ambulance to the emergency department after a gunshot wound.

It is a warm summer evening at Grady Hospital. It is my first day as an emergency room volunteer. I’m nervous and eager, hoping to see something exciting. However, it is surreally quiet. Suddenly, there is word of an ambulance en route. Minutes later the paramedics burst into the trauma slot pushing a man on a stretcher. His head and face are covered with gauze that is soaked through with dark blood. It is a flurry of well-orchestrated movement as the attendings and residents start to resuscitate him. They pull back the bandages to reveal a deep gash that is bleeding profusely. With much effort his vital signs are stabilized and he begins to regain consciousness. Later, after the excitement had passed, I learned what brought him here. He is diabetic and couldn’t afford to properly manage his condition. He had fainted due to hypoglycemia and hit his head. He had almost lost his life because of the unfortunate financial realities of modern healthcare. In that moment, I came to appreciate the very real cost of disease and the incredible role physicians have in ameliorating it. This formative experience was the beginning of my path to medicine.

Before reading this chapter I associated injuries with accidents and did not know that they were classified differently. The large number of injuries and occurrences at emergency departments did not surprise me and although the statistics were very startling, they

a brain disease induced by repetitive head trauma and linked to depression, aggression, impulse-control problems, memory loss, and dementia. Several former players-all found to have had C.T.E.-have committed suicide, and hundreds more continued to suffer from irreversible brain damage.”With these kind of brain damages many players have gone to way far parts, they have gone to suicide and kill themselves because of how painful it is to have so many things when you have already had a concussion and then had many more.“Washington State-the first to enact a youth-sport concussion safety law, in 2009-has taken a very tough line, requiring student athletes, parents, and coaches to complete a concussion-training education program each school year.” This evidence from the passage helps the reader understand that schools are trying to help students understand that being able to play that sport dangerous things can happen.

The doctor yelled at security as the patient convulsed uncontrollably on the ED bed. I watched as the officers grabbed her arms and legs, and secured them to the bed with a belt. There were very prominent track marks running down her arm and obvious burn marks on her lips and fingers. The patient had been brought in for a reported methamphetamine overdose, but what should have been a straightforward central line insertion crawled on for more than 15 minutes. I witnessed the doctor take quick action, giving the patient haloperidol and a benzodiazepine. It was incredible to see the amount of training, knowledge, and skill the doctor possessed, ultimately saving this patient’s life. Though this patient survived, this type of situation

In the experiment, the data was collected using a “cross-sectional follow-up telephone survey” with 243 patients of varying times postinjury and divided to above and below the age of 30 at the time of injury. Measures were taken of post concussive symptoms, major secondary conditions, physical and cognitive activity limitations, societal participation restrictions, environmental barriers, and perceived quality of life (Sendroy-Terrill et al,

In the midst of attending a party with his friends, a random, ricocheted bullet pierced the right side of his head while he was trying to break up a fight. The bullet blew away part of his skull and lodged into his brain. When he arrived in the trauma bay, medically he was dead- no pulse, no spontaneous respirations. His family was forewarned that if he woke up there was a strong possibility that he would never speak or walk again. The patient- B.H., was a seventeen-year-old high school senior, who was class president, and captain of the football team when he was shot. During his month long stay in ICU, the hospital staff worked around the clock to ensure that his issues were properly managed. Despite all odds, B.H. is currently in his senior year of college, plays semi-professional football, and works two jobs. What was particularly fascinating, was the way the physicians were able to prioritize and execute their management in a dire situation. The intricate thought process of managing the patient as a whole,

When reviewing the facts of the case Resurfice v. Hanke, it may appear as though it was a clear win for Resurfice inc, however I believe that the Supreme Court of Canada made some key errors in making their decision, ultimately leading the judges to make the wrong decision. Firstly the Supreme court did not place a strong enough emphasis on the design flaws of the Zamboni. As brought forth in court, both the Gasoline tank and the water tank were placed directly beside one another, they were also the same colour. Had the defects of the zamboni not made it so easy to mix the two tanks up, the explosion likely would never had happened. In addition to this Resurfice corp did not do their due diligence to make the Zamboni easier to use. According

During World War One, four-fifths of men who had entered hospital suffering shell shock were never able to return to military duty: it was imperative that such high levels of 'permanent ineffectives' were reduced.” In World War II the military tried to weed out those they though were susceptible to war trauma during the examinations, however this proved to not to work because those that passed ended up with symptoms. It also shows how the military’s understanding of trauma effects were

Mr. Gage, during the time I was examining this wound, was relating the manner in which he was injured to the bystanders. I did not believe Mr. Gage's statement at that time, but thought he was deceived. Mr. Gage persisted in saying that the bar went through his head… Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor." Soon after Dr. John Martyn Harlow took over the case and is the primary documentator of phineas’ injury and how it affected him. This case quickly spread in both medical fields and through the public drawing massive crowds and skeptics to the case of Phineas gage, some arguing that he proves that the brain doesn't control us to others wishing to research how he survived, but surprisingly for such a huge and popularised case as it was we have very little actual documentation of phineas in both pre injury and post injury, and have only one photo of the man himself. Phineas only lived around 6 months after the incident and died to ever increasing convulsions believed to have come from infections to the injury. As we have no documentation of his life before the injury we must rely on the documentation and the statements of those that