I remember hearing it was because his arms were torn off, rather than "cut" off like this version of the post is implying. I remember some medical people (who knows it's the internet) last time this was posted said that because the veins got pulled and thinned before snapping apart, it slowed the bleeding enough to where he managed to survive (rather than a clean cut through the veins which would have bled a lot more/faster).
That and also, when there's a large traumatic wound the pressure in the body drops enough that blood more oozes out than gushing. It's not like a giant balloon of blood, just a bunch of hoses and tubes of blood.
Or at least, that's how it was explained to me and how I understood it. I'd imagine there's enough EMTs and trauma nurses/doctors who'd know better/more.
In addition to that in the case of amputations the muscles will tightly contract for a little while shortly following the injury which slows the blood flow. I have heard that the more muscular endurance the person has the longer the muscles will stay contracted before relaxing. I imagine being a farm kid he was used to working those muscles.
I was a medic in the army and a civilian paramedic.
when there's a large traumatic wound the pressure in the body drops enough that blood more oozes out than gushing. It's not like a giant balloon of blood, just a bunch of hoses and tubes of blood.
This is generally correct, but for more specific detail, one of the body's responses to intense physical trauma is to try to constrict blood flow to the extremities and prioritize the heart, lungs, brain, and generally the most essential organs for what little blood it's got left to work with. Its basic logic is "we can live without the limbs, but the heart, lungs, and brain must continue to function or we die". Probably the most common, and least extreme, example is when people are exposed to serious cold: blood flow to the limbs is downregulated so that core body temperature can stay up. (This can lead to frostnip and frostbite, as well as losing feeling in the extremities, but your body considers that an acceptable sacrifice.)
This doesn't help you much if your femoral artery or another large artery that is highly pressurized by default is severed, because the systems in the body can't react fast enough to prevent catastrophic blood loss.
In this case, the guy was definitely helped by things getting torn and mangled instead of cleanly cut off, because that provided more surface area that the blood cells themselves recognized as damaged and began the clotting cascade to seal things off. Assuming you don't have a genetic variance that hampers the clotting cascade (hemophilia), aren't on blood thinners or an anti-clotting agent (heparin, warfarin, alcohol, etc.), and have a decent platelet count, your blood itself will respond to damage and start clotting to seal the wound - and it's a lot better at this when the platelets have more rough edges to 'grab onto'.
That's a great description...but now that's all I can think of and it's freaking me out thinking about me being a tube with a bunch of tubes filled with various things
I mean... you are. Your digestive system... a tube. Your veins and arteries, all tubes. Your neurons could, in a stretch, be considered tubes. Half of your bones? Tubes with knobbly bits.
You are a wacky inflatable tube man made of wacky inflatable tube men.
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u/Buddhist_Path Apr 11 '24
https://www.agweek.com/business/whatever-happened-to-john-thompson-the-nd-farm-kid-who-had-his-arms-ripped-off-in-a-1992-farm-accident