As most of you know, I’m in the thick of the insane TEDMED experience (Yes the schedule goes from 6 AM to Midnight and a Free Live stream is available here). However, I didn’t want to keep going forward with at least acknowledging what happened at the Boston Marathon. I don’t have a lot to say about it specifically, but it felt wrong to keep publishing without some comment on the tragedy of what happened.
I first found out about what was happening during my layover in the airport in Minneapolis. I boarded the flight to DC and the flight had satellite TV, so pretty much the whole way from Minneapolis to Washington DC I was watching the news to see the latest information on what happened. Needless to say I would have rather not been in a plane at that time. However, it got especially poignant as the plane was landing and I looked out my window and saw the Pentagon right below us. A pretty sobering experience. My first text when we landed was to my wife saying, “All is well.”
Rather than focus on the evil people who would do such a thing, I want to focus on the brave people who ran towards the explosion to help someone instead of ran away. The people who’d just run 26 miles who had to run a mile or two more to give blood. The healthcare workers on site and at the hospitals that took care of all the wounded. Those committing to run the 2014 Boston Marathon.
It’s hard for me to understand what could go through the minds of people who do such terrible things. The best advice I’ve heard is to “Be Calm and Carry On.” I’m sure that will be hard for many in Boston and that makes me sad.
John,
On 9/11/01 I was several blocks from the WTC, and saw the wings of the 2nd plane just before it hit. I’m a former EMT and NYPD Auxiliary Police Officer who years back worked a number of NYC Marathon’s. I’m also training to be a dispatcher for my local volunteer ambulance corp. I’ve spent piles of time in emergency rooms. But I still can’t readily imagine what it would have been like to be in Boston near the finish line on Monday, even though I was in that area a few months ago. The truth is that few of us can conceive with any sense of reality what results from an attack like this. But we have learned that our country has an amazing supply of heroes who run, step up or even march up to where they are needed. The young doctor being treated in the medical tent. The National Guard members who’d run the marathon with fully weighted rucks – filled with water and amazingly appropriate medical supplies normally meant for combat injuries, who were meeting outside the medical tent – they helped provide security and rescue at the site of one of the bombs.
The Guardsmen, at least, may be used to seeing combat injuries. But not most of the other first responders. Yet even they have their own horror stories or scares. Someone I know, an EMT, who got dispatched to his own house for an emergency. Another, not yet an EMT, on an ambulance run where he found a good friend – killed in an accident.
We techies have a challenge (assuming we are working in the field) – to help improve EHRs, mobile device support, data interchange and the like, which can be used to coordinate treatment, track survivors and the deceased, and help families find their loved ones. Plus track the long term care results for the injured.
R Troy,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really am grateful that you were willing to share a little part of yourself with us.
I was dispatching tonight when the manhunt came to a climax in Watertown. When the ambulance was moved in to remove the suspect, and the law enforcement people on the scene there started to cheer, so did everyone in the building. It wasn’t that loud – we had an active call in progress, and the crew and dispatchers had to wait for the call to be over to really cheer.
Most of us, I’m sure, were also thinking about all the victims from Monday, and their families. And we were also thinking about the victims in West, Texas, where far more people died, and many were injured, seemingly because fire fighters didn’t know about the water hating dangerous chemicals in the fertilizer plant. And those of us interested or involved in EHR and HealthIT will eventually think about the long term tracking for those who survived both disasters, and the need to have their medical data readily available to anyone who might treat them in the future.
Ron