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3rd gen Navy
Lieutenant
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 227
Location: Gainesville, Fl.
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 Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:10 am Post subject: |
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Once again, concur with DocFDL regarding contusions. Only life threatening contusions that I know of are subdural hematomas and to stretch a point, cardiac tamponade...the only reason I didn't comment on THAT point was that it was so assinine as to be laughable...anyone got any dirt on this so called "Doctor"? e.g., does he have a reputation for whoring himself out as an expert witness? has he lost his license any where?
reiterate plea for consolidation.
_________________
Warm Regards,
Sean G. Smith,
RN, BSN, EMT-B, U.S. Navy, 1994 - 2003.
BS Biology, Business Administration, Nursing
The Deal with Life: Make decisions based on what you might gain, not on what you may lose.
!!!!!! LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN !!!!!! |
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PatS
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 20 Aug 2004
Posts: 25
Location: Scottsdale,AZ
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:12 am Post subject: |
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| Isn't the NYT's referring to the Feb. 20th incident? The rice from the grenade was on March 13th. Kerry received so many Purple Hearts in such a short time; it's difficult to keep them straight. |
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BrianC
PO2
Joined: 02 Jun 2004
Posts: 364
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:17 am Post subject: |
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"about the size of a bullet" ???
They should have made it abundandtly clear by saying, "It's about the size of Kerry's conscience".
What a crock this is. |
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3rd gen Navy
Lieutenant
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 227
Location: Gainesville, Fl.
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:29 am Post subject: |
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Apologize for the huge link...but if anyone wants to pay the $8 for a full report on Dr. Doyle, visit the following link:
http://www.healthgrades.com/consumer/index.cfm?fuseaction=mod&modtype=PRC&modact=data_info&hgid=HGPY358C8699875581517&store_items_id=4
Of course, as he has been Kerry's personal physician for 18 years, no suprise that he's an official party mouthpiece... wonder if Kerry pays for the increases in malpractice premiums that lawyers like Edwards have provoked...
_________________
Warm Regards,
Sean G. Smith,
RN, BSN, EMT-B, U.S. Navy, 1994 - 2003.
BS Biology, Business Administration, Nursing
The Deal with Life: Make decisions based on what you might gain, not on what you may lose.
!!!!!! LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN !!!!!! |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:45 am Post subject: |
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| 3rd gen Navy wrote: | | Once again, concur with DocFDL regarding contusions. Only life threatening contusions that I know of are subdural hematomas and to stretch a point, cardiac tamponade. |
I once treated a bus driver whose bus was rear-ended by a car. He claimed the force of the impact of the 3,000 lb car transmorogrified right down the 30,000 lb bus, up his airspring-cushion seat, and then caused him to hit his chest on the bus steering wheel (a neat feat considering that the wheel is nearly horizontal). Then, his personal injury doc claimed he was permanently disabled due to a pericardial effusion (fluid around the heart) as a result of this impact and produced a cardiac echo (ultrasound) to prove it.
Of course, the "fluid" on the ultasound was just the usual cardiac fat pad. My response: disability: denied!
The above story is true (but not as bad as the driver who claimed injury when his bus was hit by a moped....) 
Oops....I'm sorry, I'm off on a tangent about worker's comp in Philadelphia...
However, I must say that the Dr. Doyle reports have the same flavor.
-- FDL
Last edited by fortdixlover on Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:50 am; edited 5 times in total |
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cipher
Vice Admiral
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 902
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:46 am Post subject: |
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"CT scan X-Rays?"
Uh, is that like TV radio waves? Or wireless landline telephone?
I'm not a doctor, and unlike Peter Bergman, I don't even play one on TV.
Any medics out there that can unendarken me about what a CT scan X-ray is?
_________________
USMC 69-72, 7th Comm, 3rd MarDiv, FMFPAC
US Army 75-79, 97th Sig, SHAPE, NATO
Arkansas National Guard 79
Defense contractor for US Navy, SSPO, SP-20, SP-24, OP-12 84-92 |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:59 am Post subject: |
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| cipher wrote: | "CT scan X-Rays?"
Uh, is that like TV radio waves? Or wireless landline telephone?
I'm not a doctor, and unlike Peter Bergman, I don't even play one on TV.
Any medics out there that can unendarken me about what a CT scan X-ray is? |
"CT scan X-ray" is a running-together of terms that a physician would not generally use, as it is redundant and awkward (remember those army terms in the Dan Rathergate TANG documents that stick out like a sore thumb?). A physician would say "the CT scan" or "the CT."
CT scans are commonly done in cancer evaluations, such as for prostate cancer as Kerry reportedly had, looking for signs of metastasis (spread).
It is possible that this doc added the "X-ray" to make his statement parseable by non-medical people.
CT stands for "computerized tomography" in which multiple x-ray tubes along a large ring are rotated around a person, taking multiple images from many angles. A computer then digitally reconstructs tomograms (basically, an image of a slice of tissue) as if a person were sliced up like a salami and viewed end-on, to help locate abnormalities 3-dimensionally.
A CT scanner (the machine) can actually reconstruct images that slice-and-dice a person along any axis the radiologist wants to see in ferreting out locations of abnormality.
In the past, before CT, crude tomograms could be done by moving the patient and the camera in special ways so that the x-rays focused best on a particular layer of tissue, say, the kidneys, but these were crude images at best.
CT was originally called "Computerized axial tomography" or CAT scan when invented in the mid 1970's, but shortened to CT -- pronounced "cee-tee scan" -- perhaps due to all the feline jokes...
Let's hope Mr. Kerry does not produce some late 1960's CAT Scans, backed up by Dan Rather as genuine, of course.
-- FDL
Last edited by fortdixlover on Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:22 am; edited 3 times in total |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:18 am Post subject: |
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By the way...
A "bullet-sized" piece of metal in the thigh could cause significant CT scan artifacts - a sort of digital blur or confusion of the computer's image-reconstruction algorithms.
I want to see that CT!
-- FDL |
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Denis
Seaman Recruit
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 48
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:40 am Post subject: |
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FDL,
I truly hope you do not mind, but I have sent the following to 'TimesWatch', and have quoted you, only referring to you as a physician. I do not want to invade your privacy, but if I hear back from them, I will let you know.
| Quote: | Doctors Doctoring Records at the NY Times
In the October 3, 2004 issue, the NY Times ran a piece entitled ‘On Kerry’s Journey to Health, Stops for Shrapnel and Cancer’ by Lawrence K. Altman, himself a physician. In the article, Kerry’s private physician was quoted, and what he said makes his truthfulness and/or medical judgment at the least questionable. After discussing Kerry’s more recent medical conditions, the article gets to the Swift Vet controversy:
“A group of veterans has challenged the validity of the three Purple Hearts that Mr. Kerry received for wounds he suffered while serving on Swift boats in the Vietnam war. These critics suggested that the shrapnel that hit him in one mission was rice, not metal.”
That is not the claim made by the Swift Vets. For the first piece of shrapnel, the Swift Vets claim that was caused by Kerry himself when he fired an M-79 grenade that exploded too close to him. Kranish and the other Boston Globe reporters who authored another Kerry biography, ‘John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best’, sum up the result of that wound with the words ‘’He (Kerry) was treated on an offshore ship and returned to duty hours later’ (page 95).
It is the second shrapnel wound, received on March 13, 1969, that involves ‘rice’, but the Swift Vets do not claim Kerry was only injured by rice. Again, from the Boston Globe reporter’s biography:
“At one point, Kerry and Rassman threw grenades into a huge rice cache that had been captured from the Vietcong and was thus slated for destruction. After tossing their grenades, the two dove for cover. Rassman escaped the ensuing explosion of rice, but Kerry was not as lucky - thousands of grains stuck to him. The result was hilarious, and the two men formed a bond” (page 105 of Jophn F Kerry: The Complete Biography).
What the Swift Vets claim is that explosion of grenades in a rice cache that peppered Kerry’s with thousands of pieces of rice is what also led to the second shrapnel wound, and Kerry confirms such a wound in his own notes used in ‘Tour of Duty’, the David Brinkley biography:
“The Nung (mercenaries employed by the South Vietnamese) blew up some huge bins of rice they had found...I got a piece of a small grenade in my ass from one of the rice bin explosions....”
That was the wound the later the same day Kerry claimed he received in the Rassman incident. The Times did not take the trouble to check what the Swift Vets were claiming.
Continuing with the Times article:
“However, CT scan X-rays taken at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston document that two pieces of metal shrapnel are embedded deep in Mr. Kerry's left thigh, next to the femur, said Dr. Gerald J. Doyle, Mr. Kerry's personal physician in Boston who reviewed the X-rays at the request of this reporter, who is a physician. Doctors treating the wound in 1969 decided to leave the shrapnel in place. "One piece of shrapnel is about the size of a bullet, the other a bit smaller," Dr. Doyle said.”
That was what leapt out at me fro the article. While not anything like a medical professional, I am a fifty-four year old man who has had many experiences with physicians cutting, removing and incising, and they uniformly use the terms millimeters and centimeters to describe the size of such. Dr. Doyle says:
"One piece of shrapnel is about the size of a bullet, the other a bit smaller..."
One physican I communicated with wrote this:
“As a physician, I opine that this report is very suspicious. A piece of shrapnel the "size of a bullet" that had penetrated deep enough to make removal difficult would have caused extensive soft tissue damage on its passage inwards (much as the shock wave of a bullet does). This is especially true if something penetrated all the way to the femur (long leg bone). It would have resulted in an injury that Mr. Kerry would not have walked back to duty with shortly thereafter.
Would you be walking and fit for duty soon after getting shot in the leg with the bullet deeply imbedded in your thigh next to the femur? I doubt it.
In fact, it occurs that shrapnel, being irregular in shape, would have likely caused MORE damage than a bullet in its passage. The reported findings do not seem consistent with the historical reports. Also, I agree, we physicians would have said "a 5 mm by 6 mm fragment" or other such indication, not a "bullet sized" fragment...This current report was somewhat linguistically "doctored" (no pun intended).”
I find it incredulous that we are supposed to have two physicians discussing a piece of metal lodged in someone’s body, and it is described to the satisfaction of both as ‘the size of a bullet...’.
Worse for Dr. Doyle’s credibility is the article that appeared in the Washington Post on April 24, 2004, where Doyle is also quoted:
“Washington Post
Kerry Lets Media View Medical Data
By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 24, 2004; Page A05
Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has lived for 35 years with a small piece of shrapnel in his left thigh, a remnant of one of three wounds he suffered during his 41/2-month tour in Vietnam, his personal physician said yesterday.
Kerry's campaign allowed reporters to briefly review the military medical records from his Navy service in the 1960s, and it made the Boston internist who has been his physician since 1986 available by speaker phone for a news conference.
...On Feb. 20, 1969, Kerry was hit by what the records describe as a two- millimeter-square piece of "B-40 shrapnel." Faced with the difficulty of removing the metal, Navy physicians simply left it where it was, and the wound closed up without infection.
Three weeks later, Kerry was injured again. The record reads: "In firefight approx 3 hours ago, pt was a) thrown against bulkhead sustaining injury (contusion) to R forearm. b) sustained small piece of shrapnel in L upper buttock."
Doyle said that because he was not the attending physician for any of the injuries, he could not characterize their severity. But he said the third incident was "clearly life-threatening," given a blast strong enough to throw Kerry against a bulkhead, "and he was lucky to get out of that one alive."
Do a comparison. In April, one of the pieces of shrapnel was a two millimeter square piece of metal, and there are 25.4 millimeters to an inch. This object was 1/12th of an inch. By way of comparison the average BB pellet we shot as kids from our BB guns is a caliber .177, or 177 thousands of an inch in diameter. This 2mm piece of metal would be less than 80 thousands of an inch across.
Yet in the Times article, Dr. Doyle says of the smaller piece of shrapnel “the other a bit smaller”, meaning, a bit smaller than the piece ‘the size of a bullet’. If something 1/12th of an inch across is ‘a bit smaller’ than the other object, how big a bullet was Dr. Doyle speaking of? If that 2mm piece was only a third of the size of the larger piece, the larger piece would be the size of a .22 caliber round. There is a reason why Dr. Doyle is not using exact measurements, as there is likely a reason why the physician author is letting him get away with it.
Then, in the Post piece, Doyle makes the remarkable statment that Kerry’s fall against the bulkhead of his boat was ‘clearly life threatening’. Kerry was on a boat, and according to even the Washington Post’s graphic of the event, Kerry’s boat was less than seventy five yards from another 50’ long Swift Boat that was lifted right out of the water when a mine exploded under it. The phrase ‘rock the boat’ applies to what the wave from such an explosion would do, and Kerry fell into the bulkhead with sufficient force to cause a contusion to his arm. There was no bleeding and no broken bone. Years agao, when showing my oldest sons how to retrive a basketball going out of bounds by charging after it, I charged into a cinderblock wall. I didn'’ get a contusion: I broke my elbow. That was not life threatening, and Doyle is stretching credibility when he claims that a contusion that resulted from being thrown off balance in a boat was life threatening.
The same physician I communicated with said this:
“I saw numerous patients with gunshot wounds to the limbs in the hospital where I trained, in a poverty-striken neighborhood. Saturday nights were particularly bad. The big concern was that a bullet could have severed an artery in the limb without being obvious. Arteries that have been severed tend to spasm and close off (a protective reaction by the artery's muscular wall). So, initially there's not much bleeding. However, after a day or two the severed ends of the artery relax, and the bleeding that can result can be limb and life-threatening.
On such patients, we performed an ARTERIOGRAM, where x-ray dye is injected into the limb's major arteries and traced through the area of wound to make sure no artery is hangin' in the breeze. This was standard practice in the early 1980's. I'm sure it was likewise a decade prior.
At the very least, someone showing a bullet-sized fragment near the femur on x-ray would be held over for observation for a day or two.
... If a contusion-level fall against a wall is medically "clearly life threatening", then I'm Mata Hari.”
That the Times reporter was himself a physician, and apparently did not research what the Swift Vet claims are about Kerry’s shrapnel wounds are before commenting on those claims, and allowed the use ovague terminology to replace standard medical language does not pass the smell test.
As the physician told me:
“It's not likely that after a bullet-sized fragment managed to find its way near the femur that a patient would be doing handsprings a week later. Or "jumping off his swift boat and chasing a VC behind a hootch and shooting him" 8 days later.”
Denis XXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com
New York Times article
Washington Post article |
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RMalloy
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 280
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:03 am Post subject: |
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From Tour of Duty:
| Quote: | Just as they moved out onto the Cua Lon, at a junction known for unfriendliness in the past, kaboom! PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fried at them from the far left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck, the Swiftboat managed to make an otherwise uneventful exit into the Gulf of Thailand......
The cutter's (Coast Guard) radiograph machine was out of order so the next day Kerry returned to An Thoi to have his leg X-rayed.
Kerry's wound was not serious enough to require time off from duty to
mend. |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:19 am Post subject: |
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| Denis wrote: | | FDL, I truly hope you do not mind, but I have sent the following to 'TimesWatch', and have quoted you, only referring to you as a physician. I do not want to invade your privacy, but if I hear back from them, I will let you know. |
Mind? Not at all! And your piece is excellent!
-- FDL |
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Becky
Seaman
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 179
Location: Georgia
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:21 am Post subject: |
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Hmmm...makes you wonder in today's high security at
airports, congressional entries, etc. how many
alarms Kerry causes to go off? Bet you, none.
My husband starts them going just from past
jaw wiring...
_________________
“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a
scarce man, and brave, and hated and
scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid
join him, for then it costs nothing to be a
patriot.”
- Mark Twain |
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fortdixlover
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 1476
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 4:26 am Post subject: |
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| Becky wrote: | Hmmm...makes you wonder in today's high security at
airports, congressional entries, etc. how many
alarms Kerry causes to go off? Bet you, none.
My husband starts them going just from past
jaw wiring... |
A truly excellent observation. A "bullet-sized" metal object should make the detectors go off.
Unless, it was a Bullet of the Imagination (tm) that was seared - seared into Mr. Kerry's thigh.
-- FDL |
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Stevie
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 1451
Location: Queen Creek, Arizona
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:01 am Post subject: |
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| fortdixlover wrote: | . Unless, of course, he's Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows 1960's soap opera fame...instant healing of bullet wounds - unless they're silver 
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great! someone who remembers Dark Shadows!
I'm no doctor, but even I'd know that a piece of metal the size of a bullet enterring the body is gonna cause enough injury that the 'victim' is not going to be able to get up and walk out normally and go back to work the next day!
I am a person who falls a lot and I never realized how close to death I've been.... and so many times! About 2x in the past month (for all you doctors out there, I have fibromyalgia). And about 2x this past June. I'm gonna make myself a purple heart!
In that one 'clip' didn't it say 'reporter, who is also a doctor'? Is that Howard Dean? or Mrs Howard Dean?
_________________
Stevie
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage
morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should
be arrested, exiled or hanged. |
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Hammer2
PO2
Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 387
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 6:33 am Post subject: |
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Guys, the fragments in Kerry's thigh are from the 28Feb69 incident that NavyChief has deconstructed so well here. This incident got Kerry his second Purple Heart.
The "Rice in the Butt" incident is from 13March69 and got Kerry his third Purple Heart.
The issue of the fragments is important because if they are consistent with an M386 grenade launched from an M79 grenade launcher and not from a VC B-40 RPG, then Kerry lied to get his second PH.
The 40mm M386 round has a grenade casing made of coiled steel wire notched at intervals that cause it to produce fragments like the one Dr. Letson removed from Kerry's arm. He knew it was from an M-79 round because of it's size and shape. The B-40 has a thin steel casing that breaks apart into irregular sized chunks of metal.
The description of the size and shape of fragments will clearly indicate what they are from - a B-40 as Kerry claims, or an M-79 as the information NavyChief discovered seems to indicate.
IF THE FRAGMENTS ARE FROM AN M-79 GRENADE, THEN ALL 3 OF KERRY'S PURPLE HEARTS ARE FRADULANT!
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson
Last edited by Hammer2 on Mon Oct 04, 2004 7:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
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