Post-al Code?

A couple weeks ago, I heard this radiolab piece on NPR when heading to meet family for brunch.  It talked about end-of-life issues, and what people wanted done when they were in danger of dying.  And most people wanted just about everything done for them.

But doctors were also surveyed, and doctors didn't (to a very large percentage) want anything except painkillers.

And they went on to talk about it a bit more about why, and talked, specifically, about CPR.  And they said that only about 8% of those resuscitated survive.  And just less than 40% of the survivors will be able to live a normal life afterwards.  About another 40% of the survivors will be vegetables.  And the rest will be somewhere in between.  I wish they'd given us those numbers one of the times when I've taken a CPR class.

Anyway, I was thinking about that this morning, when I heard more details about what happened to Rich Peverley in a Dallas Stars game last night.  Essentially, he collapsed on the bench, in the middle of the game.  When I heard about it, watching the Caps game, they had stopped the game for twenty-ish minutes, but had no more details.  Well, they did say, later, that he was conscious later.

What I heard this morning was that a) the game ended up being cancelled at that point (I'll come back to it, but I do think that was a good idea), and b) he was resuscitated before he was conscious.

So, best wishes to Peverley and his family.  As pointed out above, his odds are not good, and let's hope that he can beat them.

It also got me thinking about how rare cancelling a game is.  I can't remember hearing of it happening before, although I suspect it also happened when Hank Gathers collapsed and died at a Loyola Marymount basketball game in 1990 (incidentally, I didn't remember much about this incident; just hearing about it.  And I remember watching LMU's game against the Fab Five Michigan in the tournament.  That was quite the track meet).  Really, it's amazing how rare it is.

Good luck, Rich.