The Gushing Must Have Been Horrific

So fragile is human life

As the war over what people get to say about Sean Taylor's life and death begins to heat up and you know I will weigh in when I am ready, one of the interesting things I have learned about is the interstate highway system that is the body's arteries. It's been a long time since biology and since I don't watch ER or Grey's Anatomy* or the oogy real world shit on Discovery Health I have little external exposure to basic things like what is going on inside my body.

Sean was shot in the upper leg and the bullet severed the femoral artery and the more I read about the body's trucking system the more amazing it seems to me that he survived to be airlifted in the first place much less seven hours in emergency and surgical care.

Right behind the belly button the abdominal aorta splits into two iliac arteries which each split again into internal and external iliac arteries. Once the external passes through the inguinal ligament it becomes the femoral artery. It is about the size of your index finger or larger and blood is rushing through it with every heartbeat.

Your trunk, your midsection is the strongest part of the body, after all we walk, sit and stand upright, but the upper legs are the most powerful part of the body. They must maintain balance and support the direct weight of the upper body and form the stroke for walking, running and lifting motions.

And commensurate with that responsibility is an attendant consumption of body resources. Giant veins and arteries surging up and down the legs, coursing along the most solid bones and through the densest muscles in the body.

When that artery is severed, so high in the leg where it is thickest, it gushes. It can gush up to ten feet. While the heart is pumping the hardest right after this injury the body can lose 20 percent or more of its blood volume in less than ten minutes.

At first the heart pumps harder, not understanding there is a leak and trying to get blood to the extremities. But then the heart realizes there is a serious problem and starts to beat slower to conserve, vessels in the extremities shrink to constrict blood flow and body temperature starts to fall. It is now that organ failure and brain damage become serious risks.

Miami police have indicated the 911 call from Sean's house was received approximately 15 minutes after the shooting (op. cit.). This means he may have suffered significant irreparable brain or organ damage even before the first responders arrived.

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Early in Monday's coverage right after we learned it was a femoral injury I read a comment somewhere by someone that asked if a previous commenter had ever seen the movie Black Hawk Down. I went back and watched the scene where the Rangers attempt to save Cpl Smith's life from a severed femoral. It is a gruesome scene to watch.

Gruesome especially because it is such a difficult injury to treat. It is surrounded by dense muscle as well as other blood vessels, the femoral vein return shuttle being one of them. In the scene in the movie the Rangers attempt to reach up into Smith's leg and grab the artery to pinch it off. But it is slick with gore and once severed it sproings up into the abdomen like a pull down window shade when you jerk it. Even in a surgical environment it is physically difficult to operate and with the time factor working against them...

Sean was in perfect physical condition so his at rest heart rate would have been slower than average due to efficiency and his blood volume would have been larger to accommodate a physique maintained by high activity.

These two factors without doubt reduced the impact this injury would have had upon my or the average body, prolonged his life and allowed the medical teams the most time to try and save him.



* Manrules dictate the following circumstances exempt one from being considered a 'viewer:' it does not count if you are merely in the room while the wife watches; it does not count if you watch it to get out of the doghouse; it does not count if you watch to facilitate an ulterior motive such as sex or getting out to play Guitar Hero III with the boys; when in doubt feign ignorance, you know George is going to dump that bitch Izzie and get back with Torres anyway.

Field memorial to Sean Taylor at Redskins Park from here. Femoral artery diagram from here.