Word: hypothermia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...some $1.2 billion in additional help. As a result, states are moving on their own. Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island are all looking into setting aside funds to provide heating money to the needy. In Virginia, Winchester Memorial Hospital's emergency-room staff is studying the treatment for hypothermia, caused when severe cold, combined with poor nutrition, makes body temperature drop, a potentially fatal problem for the aged...
THEN, FINALLY, it hit me. If I stayed, all three of us would die. They'd already given up and had sat down in the snow. The last stages of hypothermia were setting in, which meant they were already as good as gone. What chance would I have to make it through the night alone? It was highly likely I would die crossing the stream, but at least I would have tried to get out; I couldn't give up the way they had. At the same time one voice was telling me I was done for, another told...
...tried to put the pack back on. One arm wouldn't move. No matter how hard I tried and concentrated it remained immobile and useless. And the other couldn't bend enough to be of any use. Meanwhile I'd started to shiver uncontrollably--the first symptom of hypothermia. I jumped up and down trying to keep warm. I couldn't laugh, the irony was too bitter--I'd made it across the stream, but to what...
...were opposite me. Johnnie yelled, wanting to know how I'd gotten across. It took me too long to understand what he was saying, let alone to try to formulate an answer. At the same time I had enough clarity of mind left, slow as it worked, to realize hypothermia was really beginning to grip me. I could see myself fast approaching the state the two men were in but I knew Johnnie et al would soon be over to help...
...SAME time their death isn't tormenting me, my life didn't bother them. I know it didn't. Hypothermia, in many respects, is a gracious killer. At the point we left the men they no longer cared. Soon they wouldn't realize what was happening, let alone remember me and the fact I could get away while they couldn't. Nor would they remember the only thing I later learned about them--that they were father and son--which like everything else that happened that day was a mixed blessing...