Pa Seizure Reporting: Fill & Download for Free

Traveling to Germany, I was waiting at the SFO boarding gate. A woman and her husband walked into the area and, as I watched, the man slowly spun down and gently collapsed to the floor.My high tech work involved emergency response training, so I walked over and offered assistance, saying that I was trained in basic first aid and CPR. The woman calmly replied that her husband was experiencing an epileptic seizure and he would soon recover.I returned to my seat in the lounge and maintained my observation of the couple. At that point, the woman attempted to check in for the flight and suddenly began to act in a rather distressed manner. It soon became clear that the gate personnel were (rightfully) concerned that the man might experience a more severe seizure during the flight and were declining to have them board the plane.This only served to increase the woman’s anxiety as she began to carry on about how they had planned this trip for a long time and had to connect with their tour group in Vienna via this particular flight or risk missing everything. Evidently, her husband had neglected to obtain a physician’s statement as to how extended (transatlantic) air travel posed no significant health danger.As the woman’s strident protestations reached a crescendo she, too, unexpectedly collapsed. Falling backward, I distinctly heard her skull collide with the base of one of the retractable-belt barrier stanchions. Worse yet, there was an audible clunking sound as her head hit the polished terrazzo floor.I ran over and began checking her vital signs, asking that she visually track my moving finger, and looking for unequal pupil dilation (a sign of concussion). She immediately attempted to get up, at which point I informed her that she had to remain supine until paramedics could perform a full assessment of her condition.She began to vocally protest, mentioning again how important this trip was. I gently reassured her that Lufthansa was one of the world’s most professional commercial air carriers and that they would do everything within their power to assure that she and her husband arrived in Vienna on time.Again, she sought to stand up and I had to (more forcefully) insist that she remain lying down due to the risk that a potential head-injury might require stabilization. I continued to remain at her side and did my best to keep her calm.By this time the passengers had begun boarding. The gate staff took over monitoring the woman and instructed me to get on the plane.As I was stowing my carry-on bag in coach, a flight steward approached me and asked that I accompany him with my luggage. I thought to myself, “Oh great, they’ve decided that my flute is a broken down Uzi and want to put me through the wringer.”The steward led me forward into business class and pointed me to a seat, all the while thanking me for rendering assistance to the woman and her husband. Later on, he told me about a couple returning from Moscow where the husband had experienced a (undisclosed) stroke. After mentioning to me how most strokes are followed by a repeat event within 48 hours, he described how that exact thing happened, forcing the flight to make an emergency landing.However, before that could happen, they had to jettison excess fuel which resulted in Canada imposing an environmental pollution fine. When combined with the actual fuel cost (i.e., $1,000 per tonne), somewhere around $100K was on the table. As in, Lufthansa might as well have paid all the passengers to take that flight. That said, back to business class…Let’s see, tons of leg room (a huge plus for my 185 cm (6′ 1″) frame. Pre-flight complimentary Champagne. Some of the best inflight service and food I’ve ever experienced. Different fine wines with every course of the meal. Plus a shot or three of Johnny Walker Black and Rémy Martin VSOP for afters. Gotta love it!Fast forward a few years to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport in The Philippines. Exhausted after trekking the Banaue rice terraces, I may as well have been a spring chicken compared to the guy sitting across from me in the boarding area.This chap looked like five miles of hammered sh!t. He had numerous facial scrapes and minor lacerations. Hell, even his ears were scuffed and scabbed in several places. From what I could tell, this guy was only halfway recovered from a weeks-long bender of stupendous proportions. His speech was mildly slurred and, as we conversed, I was obliged to repeat myself more than a few times before getting an intelligible answer from him.By this time the flight crew were arriving and one of the stewardesses approached this bloke and asked him if he was all right, or whether he might like something to make him feel better. After she departed, I leaned over and told this fellow that he would be well-advised to get some caffeine into him right away. A Coca-Cola or some strong black tea were my suggestions.The stewardess returned with a beverage and, slowly, he spun out his tale of woe. Prefacing it with mention that he was a recovering alcoholic, he then regaled me with an account of his solo trip to Thailand and a few weeks of falling off the wagon with seismic force. I had to physically restrain myself from asking him what in blue blazes he was doing traveling unaccompanied to one of the world’s premier party destinations (i.e., Thailand).As the caffeine slowly began to kick in, up walked one of the pilots, who proceeded to interrogate this still-crapulent individual. By some unnamed miracle road-rash-boy was allowed onboard and, as I settled into cramped coach seating, my thoughts drifted back to my Philippine odyssey.A few hours after dinner service, just as everyone was bedding down for the night, the PA system came alive and asked, “Is there a doctor on board?” A few minutes later, this same announcement was repeated and it crossed my mind that all of this might have to do with road-rash-boy.I summoned a stewardess and asked her whether this medical crisis involved a middle-aged man with dirty-blond hair and wearing a knotted string bracelet on one of his wrists (something I had noticed back at the boarding gate). She returned and replied in the affirmative. Once again, I mentioned my prior training in basic first aid and CPR. At that point, she asked me to please walk up to the forward galley.Sure enough, huddled on the floor was road-rash-boy, clearly not enjoying himself at that point. I re-introduced myself to him and (thankfully) he recognized me. His primary complaint was a severe headache and anxiety. After checking his vital signs and pupillary response, one of the stewardesses mentioned that they had a digital sphygmomanometer (blood pressure measurement system) on board.I took two different readings to confirm his base state and also took his temperature (which was close to normal) in order to ensure that nothing was going to go all pear-shaped in the next few minutes. At that time, I asked one of the flight staff to please get a bag of crushed ice wrapped in a wet wash cloth. I applied this to the back of road-rash-boy’s neck so as to improve vascular tone and alleviate his headache.By this time, he was asking for an analgesic. Knowing full-well that all of these problems were the result of him putting his liver through an Iron-man triathlon, I politely inquired as to whether or not he was on any prescription medications.His reply included mention of how (for weeks) he had neglected to take one or two heart meds and that was that. I told him there was no way he was getting any aspirin, caffeine, or anything else that could affect his cardiovascular function. Another blood pressure check showed a gradual decline, so I gave him a Sprite soft drink to up his blood sugar.After another quarter-hour, the blood pressure check was repeated and it showed a continued downward trend from his original elevated status. The flight staff and I felt confident enough to where this miserable specimen of humanity was stretched across a bank of three unoccupied seats and put to bed. As an after-note, his arrival at SFO included being greeted by an incandescently furious wife.As I returned to my coach seat, a stewardess accosted me and asked that I please retrieve my carry-on baggage and belongings. By that time, I knew the drill.Once again, I was ensconced in business class (well-after dinner service, DRAT!) and treated to a fully reclining seat (bliss). In the morning, I hand wrote a three-page report of the incident and gave that to the flight steward, just in case of any litigation. Sadly, the airline did not have the courtesy to reply. Oh well.Then there was the time that …I think I’ll stop now.

During the Revolutionary War George Washington hosted a dance for his officers. When the wife of Nathanael Greene rashly declared that she could dance all night, Washington dared her to prove it. He kept her on the dance floor for three consecutive hours before she laughingly cried uncle. Washington was so terrified of being buried alive that as he was dying, he instructed his servants to wait two days after his death before interring him.When John Adams was admitted to Harvard, he rode his horse from Braintree to Cambridge to enroll. He took his books with him and read while he rode. In his old age, he had to sell property to his son, John Quincy Adams, to stay financially afloat.The Lewis and Clark expedition is considered more important today than it was at the time it was undertaken. Thomas Jefferson especially hoped they would find a Northwest Passage. When they didn’t, he thought the entire expedition had been a failure and was so chagrined, he rarely mentioned it.James Madison and Aaron Burr were classmates and political rivals at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). Madison studied Hebrew and became fluent in it.George Washington is the only president who was elected unanimously by the Electoral College. In 1820 James Monroe received all but one electoral vote, and an urban legend holds that the dissenting elector voted against him in order to preserve Washington’s unique distinction. Actually, the elector, William Plumer, voted for Monroe’s opponent because he simply didn’t like Monroe even though he was pledged to vote for him.John Quincy Adams was the last member of the Federalist Party to become president. Defeated for re-election, he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives and served five years before he suffered a fatal stroke on the House floor.Andrew Jackson, who had a phobia about owing money, became the only president to pay off the national debt.Martin Van Buren served one term as president, ran again in 1840, and lost. The 1840 version of political attack ads were a chant, “Van, Van is a used-up man,” and an insinuation that Van Buren was a fop who perfumed his whiskers.William Henry Harrison had ten children with his wife and possibly as many as six children by a slave mistress named Dilsia. Nonetheless he sold four of Dilsia’s children.John Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, becoming the only president who supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. However, he died before he could attend a session.James K. Polk never had children and may have been sterile or impotent. In his teens he developed bladder stones which were so painful that his father took him from Tennessee to Dr. Ephraim McDowell, a renowned 19th-century Kentucky surgeon. McDowell removed the stones but may have damaged nerves in the process. That was not unusual prior to the invention of ether, when the best doctor was the fastest, one who could cut open his patient and sew him back up before the patient died of shock; haste sometimes caused collateral damage. Polk had the shortest post-presidential life (three months) and his wife, Sarah, the longest widowhood (42 years).Zachary Taylor was a Mayflower descendant and father-in-law of Jefferson Davis during Davis’s first marriage.Millard Fillmore encountered financial difficulties as an ex-president, which he solved the old-fashioned way: he married a rich widow.Although an alcoholic and a failed president, after leaving the White House Franklin Pierce became a successful investor in real estate. Barbara Bush, nee Pierce, is a collateral descendant of Franklin Pierce.James Buchanan insisted that his portraits, whether painted or photographed, show him from his right side. He didn’t like the way he looked from the left side.Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was a dead ringer for Harrison Ford.As Abraham and Mary Lincoln rode to Ford’s Theatre in their carriage, he talked about his post-presidential plans, saying he wanted to visit the Holy Land. But although he knew the Bible well, a close friend said that Lincoln did not believe Jesus was divine. That would mean Lincoln was not a Christian.Andrew Johnson is the only U.S. president who had no formal education from either school or tutors. As a boy he was apprenticed to a tailor who hired people to read aloud while the apprentices worked. A fellow tailor taught him to read and write. As an adult, he furthered his education by reading voraciously, attending speeches, and having his wife read aloud while he sewed. He married the second woman to whom he proposed; the first turned him down even though he sweetened the proposal with a gift of a quilt he’d sewed himself.Ulysses S. Grant was mistakenly enrolled at West Point as Ulysses Simpson Grant (Simpson was his mother’s maiden name). Since he’d never liked his first name, Hiram, he never corrected the mistake. Contrary to the widespread impression that Grant was an alcoholic, he held his liquor when he was with his family and drank to excess mostly when he was stationed on a military post far away from them. Junior officers knew to prevent him from taking a first drink, because after that he tended to keep drinking.During the Civil War Rutherford Hayes served in the same regiment as another future president, William McKinley.James Garfield’s mother divorced her second husband, causing a minor scandal at the time. Garfield attended what is now Hiram College, but which at the time bore the resounding name of Western Reserve Eclectic Institute.Chester Arthur was subjected to “birther” rumors that he had been born in Canada; he was actually born in Vermont. His mother was Canadian.Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian minister who did missionary work, which kept his family poor. Grover reportedly learned of his father’s death from a boy hawking newspapers. Moses Cleaveland (that’s how he spelled it), a Revolutionary War hero for whom the city of Cleveland, Ohio was named, was a distant relation.Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison. He owed his career in part to one (I am not making this up) Godlove Stein Orth. In 1876 Orth was the Republican Party’s candidate for governor of Indiana, but when he was accused of involvement in a financial scandal, he withdrew and Harrison was chosen to take his place. Though he lost the gubernatorial race, it raised his political profile.William McKinley’s wife, Ida, was epileptic. If she had a seizure while they had guests, McKinley would throw a napkin or towel over her head and continue as if nothing was amiss, removing the cloth after the seizure passed. After her husband’s assassination, Ida never had another seizure.Theodore Roosevelt’s father took advantage of a law allowing him to pay someone else to take his place in the military draft during the Civil War. After he had his family, he worked in New York City and came home to Long Island only on weekends. Teddy had asthma as a child, but since he rarely had attacks on weekends, some experts on asthma suggest that his condition may have been psychosomatic and was temporarily “cured” whenever he had his father’s full attention.William Howard Taft is the first president to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt but never served in the military.Woodrow Wilson is the only president who earned a Ph.D. degree.Because Warren Harding came from the wrong side of the tracks in Marion, Ohio, his father-in-law suspected that he was part black and bitterly opposed his daughter’s decision to marry him. DNA tests on male collateral Harding descendants have determined that the family has no African ancestry.Calvin Coolidge was fluent in Italian and wrote a translation of Dante’s Inferno. A story that immediately after their wedding he gave his wife a bag of socks to darn may be apocryphal.Herbert Hoover claimed to be the very first student to enroll at Stanford (in 1891) because he was the first to move into a dorm. He and his wife learned Mandarin Chinese while he was working as a mining engineer in China. In the White House they conversed in Mandarin when they wanted to foil eavesdroppers.Franklin Roosevelt’s polio may actually have been Guillain-Barre syndrome. His parents were sixth cousins and he was his wife Eleanor’s fifth cousin once removed.Harry Truman served in World War I even though he should have been rejected for military service for his poor eyesight. Desperate to serve his country, he passed his physical by memorizing the eye chart.Dwight Eisenhower’s mother was a pacifist who did not approve of her son’s decision to attend West Point. Because of his long military career, he and Mamie never owned a house until they bought their retirement home, a farm in Gettysburg, Pa. On their wedding day Ike unromantically told Mamie, “My country comes first and always will. You come second.”Improbable as it now sounds, John F. Kennedy was once a Boy Scout. As a prep school student, Kennedy joined some of his friends in a practical joke, blowing up a toilet seat. When the headmaster referred to the vandals as “muckers,” the conspirators named themselves The Muckers Club.Lyndon Johnson proposed to Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor the morning after they met. She turned him down, but he continued to propose for the next two weeks until she finally accepted.During his years (1963–68) as a corporate lawyer in New York City, Richard Nixon became a connoisseur of fine wines. As president, when he hosted a dinner, he served himself a better wine than he served his guests. White House waiters were instructed to wrap his bottle in a towel so that no one could see the label.Gerald Ford was born Leslie King, Jr. After his mother divorced his father and remarried, she and her second husband, Gerald Rudolff Ford, began calling her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr., although his stepfather never formally adopted him. As an adult, Ford legally changed his name and began spelling his middle name “Rudolph.” On a state visit to Japan, Ford, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was serenaded by a band playing the fight song of Michigan State. Ford lived 93 years and 165 days, which to date is the longest life of any U.S. president. [UPDATE: Jimmy Carter is now the longest-lived president.]Jimmy Carter is the only U.S. president who has lived in public housing. He, Rosalynn, and their three sons spent a year in subsidized housing in Plains after he resigned from the Navy to take over his father’s peanut business. Although his father left a sizable estate, he made so many bequests that no one, including Jimmy, got rich from his death.Ronald Reagan was given his first nickname, “Dutch,” by his father, who said he looked like “a fat little Dutchman.”George H. W. Bush was nicknamed “Poppy” as a child. His granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager, named her second daughter Poppy for him.Bill Clinton played rugby at Oxford while he was a Rhodes Scholar. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2004 and became a vegan afterward.Although his family’s fortune was made in the oil business, as governor of Texas George W. Bush signed a law that required electricity retailers in Texas to buy a certain amount of energy from renewable sources.Barack Obama speaks Bahasa Indonesian at about a fifth-grade level.

I visited Israel and Palestine, so called, 28 years ago and before Arafat had returned . The Oslo 1 agreement was a year away. The situation looked on its way to resolution. Arabs moved freely into Israel and out again. All of our cab drivers were Arabs living in the West Bank. That situation has not endured. If the PA and Israel do not make agreement on their relationship and borders, a remote possibility at the moment, Israel will continue to expand settlements into the West Bank and ultimately render the PA irrelevant. The UN is a major problem. It has given the PA the belief that it has a righteous claim to restore the borders in place before the 1967 War. From all indications the PA will sacrifice its existence ultimately in the service of that belief. The UN must withdraw from the controversy and make clear that it remains an issue for the PA to resolve with Israel. The UN's silence in the presence of Russia's seizure of the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine, and Russia's encroachments on eastern Ukraine, assure us the UN knows how to maintain its silence. The PA, on the other hand, is quite aware that if it makes peace with Israel and acquires sovereign status in the West Bank and Gaza, it must stop the terrorism or find itself at war with Israel. As long as Hamas rules the PA, no deal with Israel is possible.