A small metal ball that can't be removed, lodged in your heart does not

[henslee]

sound good anyway you spin it. Yup, CNN just said the bb in his heart is inoperable.

[gWbush is Mabus]

1. and it's LEAD (toxic)

[MADem]

12. Steel, they don't do lead anymore, poisons the game birds

who come around later pickin' and pecking....

[Jack from Charlotte]

15. Stainless? Or will it rust? *

*

[MADem]

20. Well, hell I may just stand corrected (though it would be stainless!)

"At this distance he's peppered with lot of small holes," said Dr. J. Wayne Meredith of the Wake Forest School of Medicine, who has seen similar injuries.

A report filed with Texas Parks and Wildlife said the vice president was using size 7 1/2 shot. A three-quarter ounce load of that size shot would normally contain more than 250 pellets. Each pellet is about the size of a small letter "o" in newspaper print.

Birdshot is usually made with steel or lead, but even lead pellets left in the body wouldn't pose a danger of lead poisoning, said Dr. Renae Stafford, a trauma surgeon at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Medicine.

"People speak of lead poisoning, but in reality it's not something we see," agreed Dr. Maurizio A. Miglietta of the New York University School of Medicine. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11354320/

Apparently, they still let folks use lead in TX, which is noted downthread!!!

[ProfessorGAC]

29. It Will Surface Rust

The acids in the body are too weak to do any pit corrosion. And rust is no more toxic than virgin steel. In fact, once it rusts is becomes less reactive to anything in the body, because it's already at its ultimate oxidation state. It can't react any further with air, and oxides don't react with weak carboxylic acids in the blood.

So, rusting won't matter to the body.
The Professor

[papau]

18. Texas use "steel only" for waterfowl - this may be lead

:-(

[MADem]

22. Yep, I discovered my error afterward--see my post above n/t

[DenaliDemocrat]

35. NO, it is lead

Lead is outlawed for waterfowl hunting because it is done over fields or swamps, places where birds might pick up the shot. It is not outlawed for upland hunting, and 7 1/2 shot is too light if made with steel.

[MADem]

38. Yep, I corrected myself, above n/t

[Ganja Ninja]

17. Lead shot is outlawed in most places but ...

we all know how much respect our VP has for the law and the environment. He was using a custom shotgun so he may have decided he needed lead shot to protect his gun. He's that kind of guy. It's all about him and screw everyone and everything else.

[liberal N proud]

2. All it has to do is move in the slightest depending on the direction

of the move would be all it would take.

[Sugar Smack]

Well, he'd better not go out dancing tonight.

(As the fucked-up MSM is liable to report)

[txindy]

3. Aw, no. They finally determined the actual location?

I was hoping they'd be able to remove it. How awful. Nobody should suffer through such a thing. I can't imagine having that in my heart and knowing it could move at any moment.

[MADem]

27. Good description of location, here

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11354320/

One of the pellets from the 28-gauge shotgun that Cheney had fired had migrated to the heart, either touching or embedding into the heart muscle near its top chambers, called the atria. That irritated those chambers to cause the irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation.

But doctors also spotted inflammation -- which always occurs when something foreign invades the body -- that was causing a temporary block in blood flow, by touching or pushing the heart, explained Dr. David Blanchard, chief of emergency care at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

...

Interesting read...

[MuseRider]

4. Anything that makes your

heart muscle irritable is not good. AND it is lead. Nasty situation.

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. It is bad.

I wonder when we'll actually get the truth about it.

[malaise]

9. So Whittington is doing legal work

in his room(?) in intensive care but does not have a TV...and of course he is only in intensive care for privacy reasons. Do these morons believe that the public knows nothing about hospitals and the ICU? No one stays in the ICU without being seriously ill.

[Nikki Stone 1]

36. Yep. There's more holes here than a swiss cheese sandwich

nt

[Avalux]

6. Eventually, his body will encapsulate the bead.

For every bead still in his body, it will be surrounded by scar tissue so it can't move anywhere; that'll happen in the heart too and it won't be able to do any more damage. Unfortunately, the tissue in the heart that's already been damaged will never recover.

[henslee]

13. Thanks for droppin the knowledge.

[Avalux]

19. You're welcome -

our bodies are really amazing; it takes awhile though for the scar tissue to develop. That's why Mr. Whittington will be in the hospital for at least another week. I won't be surprised if there's movement by more of the beads before then. It's possible there could be some in his bloodstream if any nicked a blood vessel. At first they said the wounds were superficial; I think it's pretty clear now that's not true.

[henslee]

23. oops.

[Jack from Charlotte]

16. Will this steel ball set off metal detectors in airports? *

*

[Avalux]

21. I don't know - shrapnel does.

He's still got a bunch of those little balls in his body so I guess it's possible. That's if they're steel; they might be lead. I don't think that question has been answered yet.

[Jack from Charlotte]

25. And what about MRI's? Can the magnetic field pull the shot out of the body

during an MRI?

[Avalux]

28. If they're steel, yes.

The beads can be pulled by the magnetic field and do even more damage.

[Burried News]

7. Wull heyel cain't they jus give him a laxative and let him crap it out?

:hurts:

[snappyturtle]

8. Didn't you hear....

on TV yesterday a doctor said that since shot is round it isn't a big threat! He said sharp or pointed objects like shrapnel (SP?) would pose a bigger problem. But, I'm with you guys--who needs shot in heart muscle. And, I think it's illegal to have shot made of lead.

[Avalux]

10. Texas law:

Bird shot for waterfowl must be made of steel. Bird shot for upland game birds (quail) can be lead. Lead is the preferred material for accuracy.

[MADem]

14. Wow, that is NEWS to me! Mind, I don't hunt in TX! n/t

[Burried News]

26. Hope they don't try to do an MRI on Whittington - that'll get a steel

ball out in a hurry.

[snappyturtle]

34. Thanks. I'm not a hunter...

I'm in MN and I know duck hunting and lead shot don't mix. I would THINK lead would be dangerous to birds on land or water....???

[uppityperson]

11. Heart physiology

the heart is a big muscle that pumps blood through its chambers. Basically it is like a balloon, or 2 balloons stuck together. When it pumps, blood gets shoved through it. Now, the heart needs to get blood to its self, into its muscle like every other muscle does and the blood being shoved through it is not enough to keep it alive. So there are arteries, veins, capillaries throughout the heart to bring blood to the heart muscle itself. These are what get plugged, leading to a heart attack (blood is stopped to one part of the heart itself. Ignore all that blood going through the heart because that is of no account for the heart itself. make sense?).

In order to say he had a mild heart attack, the pellet must be in the heart muscle, NOT in the chambers of the heart. Where in the muscle is it? How did it get there? Why can they not do surgery and remove it, like they do bypass surgery to bypass other plugged up cardiac arteries?

confusion

[Avalux]

24. Surgery not possible.

The man is 78 years old and they'd have to open up the chest cavity to get it - the risk would be far too great. You are correct that the bead is lodged in the heart muscle. The heart attack was caused by the bead killing the tissue around it which caused an irregularity in the 'firing' of the heart. It wasn't a typical heart attack.

[henslee]

30. What you are saying is what should be on TV right now.

[nomatrix]

32. A question

He was wearing clothing so wouldn't a pellets piercing his skin and took a bit of fabric fiber, fester?

[Avalux]

33. No, I don't think so.

The beads are smooth and round - they'd pierce the clothing cleanly. Something like jagged like shrapnel would be different.

[Hubert Flottz]

37. If the pellet was lead, which I'll bet it was, or brass plated lead...

the pellet may have flattened out some, on impact and may not be round and smooth anymore. A shotgun pellet will mushroom just like a bullet will, if it hits a bone. I can't believe the man isn't in pain if the pellet passed through both layers of the pericardium and into the heart. The risk of pericardial effusion and cardiac tamponade are still quite real I'd think. As someone who has gone through some bouts with pericarditis, I can tell you that the pain is very bad. On the scale of one to ten, the pain I had with pericarditis was about a seven. So the guy isn't having fun I'd guess.

I'd be inclined to believe that the man Cheney shot, is in pretty bad shape. I'm glad it's not me, I'll put it that way.

[uppityperson]

39. Don't forget the muscles and bones in the way also.

[Hubert Flottz]

40. Right...or what bones the pellets may have struck on impact.

There could even be bone chips involved. I can't believe there isn't some damage to the man's lungs. And the doctors said there were still "several shot" in the man's body, that they hadn't removed.

[Burried News]

31. If it got in the heart muscle then the blast penetrated the chest wall

and he was a tad more than 'peppered'.

Hey why shouldn't the press be entitled to some poetic (?) license. After all Cheney was allowed to play shootemup without one.