Mom Ticketed After Rushing Burned Baby To Hospital

snip>

A trooper attempted to pull her over but she ignored his lights and sirens. Eventually, the trooper escorted her to the hospital. Police received reports she was traveling as fast as 90 to 100 mph.

Her 9-month-old son was burned by steam from a fallen iron. He suffered second-degree burns to his hand and foot.
........
The link has the rest of the little story and a vote poll.

http://www.whiotv.com/news/4438715/detail.html

There are ticket quotas to meet, fines to keep the department funded to be made.

:shrug:

There's no reason to drive 100 mph for 2nd degree burns over so small an area of the body. It certainly hurts, but not an emergency. It was the ride to the hospital that was life threatening.

She was probably freaking out and the baby was probably screaming bloody murder. I know I'd be freaking out. But I wouldn't drive that fast because that can make matters worse.

...with that situation yourself.

wasn't my child. My best friend's husband got severely burned on the face while grilling out one night and we had to rush him to the hospital. I drove faster than usual, but not 100 mph. After I lost a brother in a car accident where he lost control, I am very cautious as to how I drive. Faster isn't always better.

...than a grown man with a burned face.

If she would have had an accident at 100 MPH, the second degree burns on the young one would have been the least their problems.

Sure there is a difference in age, but when you are in a situation like that with anyone, not knowing the extent of the damage, you tend to freak out. The guy I'm talking about inhaled the flames and burned his throat and lungs and was going into shock. It was a very serious situation. When your adrenaline is pumping like that and you are freaking out, you may make some bad judgments especially when driving. Going 100 mph is fast and it is very easy to lose control endangering everyone in the car with you as well as others on the road.

You let me know the next time you accidently burn your child.

I call BS on that for damned sure.

...were and she was understandably upset.

By the way, did you know that ANY burns on an infant can be life threatening because of the potential for infection?

The only "BS" in this thread is your post.

but even I know that 2nd degree burns cause blisters. Wrap your car around a pole and see what you get. Dead, that's what.

...have been able to determine the difference between 2nd degree and 3rd degree blisters?

Interesting.

As far as any potential accident is concerned, it didn't happen in this case...why discuss it?

1st degree burn: reddening of the skin(sun burn).
2nd degree burns: blisters.
3rd degree burns: blackening and flacking of skin.

...child screaming in your car when you posted that to DU.

Hindsight is always 20-20, and you seem to have more than your fair share.

She pulled a pot of (long percolating) coffee over on herself while I was at work. My mother got her to the hospital where they called my office. I can still hear her screaming from the other end of the hospital and she kept it up until I got there, maybe twenty-five minutes later, when she finally passed out. She had second degree burns on thirty percent of her body. Blisters??!! :grr: The skin on her shoulder had completely fallen off and she was blistered from her neck to her diaper. She spent six weeks in the burn unit and six weeks as an outpatient, where we had to go to debreed the wounds. For YEARS she would start screaming whenever we had to drive on the road past the hospital.

It was life-threatening. The worst experience of my life, bar none.

I wonder how many of those attacking you would feel the same way if this woman had hit one of their love ones while she was speeding to the hospital?!!?

Fear, guilt shame and blame takes the reasoning section right out of the brain. I can understand her panic and that it was a dangerous drive as well. :shrug:

Many more people die on the way to the hospital than get killed by people speeding to the hospital.

to the hospital..Never even saw a cop, but I am sure that had there been one, they would NOT have ticked me.. I would have WELCOMED seeing a cop.. I was scared out of my wits ....

It all worked out ok, and our son was fine....but at the time I was panicked.. Back then there was no 911 and not even an ambulance company in town..

Now everyone driving over the speed limit is on their way to blow up a check point in Peoria - they must be stopped.

at least twice :)

Ever see "Last Picture Show"?? The place the shot that movie looked TEN times better than Belen:)

Got a call from wife while at work, baby girl hit her head and went unconscious... ran two reds (carefully) to get home and get her to hospital.

But think of it - speeding is speeding for whatever reason, and I could care less about getting fined or even jailed if it meant I could save my kid.

The doctor who treated him, was our NEW next door neighbor.. He was a surgeon from Milwaukee who moved to the boonies to raise his kids, and was doing ER work to get a toe-hold into the community as he started his private practice..

He accepted tamales for payment soometimes from his poor patients..

John was a god-send, and on more than one occasion, he treated one of our sons in a swimsuit, after he hopped the fence..

His wife was a peds nurse, so we were in "doctor-heaven" while we lived there :)

that rear-ended me at a red light. The car was wasted, radiator fluid, plastic, and glass everywhere. The driver needed it to run long enough to get a few more blocks to get her child to the emergency room.

Speeding isn't always the fastest way to get somewhere.

This gives troupers a bad rap! It just isn't right.

:eyes:

Nope, that didn't happen!

Yes, sexism is offensive, even when you express it "casually."

God.

I guess I should have added a wink or laughing smiley?

It really isn't that hard to take the extra second and at least feign concern for not offending others. Especially not when it really isn't necessary to express an offensive opinion.

maybe you should at least get creative about it. That whole "women are bad drivers" fallacy was last "cute," "funny" or trendy about 1950. 1955 tops. Seriously, I've come to expect more intelligence and style from DU contributors.

If it had been a guy driving, I would have made a comment that he should have let his wife drive.


Why must people read more into something than is there?

race is. The story is a bit short on details though.

Jay

she should have pulled over and had him rush the baby to the hospital.

She put the child at risk more by driving that way than the burns.


She could have easily hurt innocent drivers by doing what she did.

and HELLO? you have a hot iron somewhere where the kid can get burned in the first place.. She doesn't sound like she has much common sense.

before you flame me.. I sympathize with her, I just think she's an idiot.

I still have the scars from an iron incident when I was a baby, obviously I don't remember the incident but I know that I was crawling. I yanked the cord and ended up with 2nd and 3rd degree burns across my right wrist and hand. My mom says she had turned her back for a couple of seconds and that was all that I needed. She wasn't careless, accidents like this happen and the person that feels the worst is the mother.

Hell, even experienced parents make mistakes.

You can't judge the extent of damage on a child. When I was small I pulled an alarm clock down on myself. It cracked me on the head and I started to bleed. Of course, I saw the blood and started screaming. My mom was scared to death. She rushed me to the hospital and once they got through all the matted bloody hair, it turned out I had only cut my scalp, the wound was not serious at all.

But when you're a parent looking at your kid screaming in pain, that doesn't cross your mind.

WTF

The article doesn't give the woman's name.

Had me going for a moment.....:rofl:

In fact, I found that I would only drive him to the ER if he was bad but not yet bad enough for an ambulance.

Only once so far, thankfully, have I ever had to call an ambulance for my little guy and when I was riding with him as he was gasping, there were some real assholes who were trying to cut off the ambulance as well as following it through intersections...unbelievable.

I understand the mother's concern and I can totally understand what she was doing but she could have been killed or hurt someone else. If she was that worried she should have called for an ambulance.

I've had to do this twice in my life, once for a friend who cut himself open with a chainsaw, once for my wife when she severely injured her eye. Both times I was hoping to pick up a cop in order to clear a path for me. Both times I was out in the middle of nowhere, and it was the better decision for me to go in rather than wait on an ambulance.

I really find this to be no big deal. Hell, normal traffic in a lot of places regularly hits ninety, and if you have any sort of driving experience at all, you should be able to handle a hundred easily. Hell, millions of citizens in Germany do this on a daily basis on the Autobahn each and every day.

Of course, it did help that I had experience driving emergency vehicles, but still, a hundred isn't that big a deal.

"You honor, it was important enough that I had to drive like a maniac and put people in danger, but why should it be worth paying a $200 ticket?"

I'm in favor of her getting a ticket, but not in favor of her being prosecuted.

I'd also be willing to say it should count as a "civil infraction" that doesn't raise her insurance rates or add points to her license.

And I would have accepted one if I had gotten popped. But there are times when it is neccessary to go like a bat out of hell. This apparently was one of them.

As a parent, I completely understand why the woman spazzed and thought driving her child to the ER was the right thing to do. And as always I *love* reading the anti-speeders here at DU (:sarcasm:) But she should have called 911 - unless there was a screwup, her child would have received medical care quicker.

However when you're out in the middle of nowhere, it can be life and limb threatening to wait for emergency help to come. Better to get the person to the ER yourself.

As a native New Yorker, I too frequently assume certain services are available to most folks. And again, I'm not blaming the mother - she did what she thought was clearly the best thing to do. I think my feelings on speed are known by most, anyway...

to get there. The cops averaged around eight minutes. What people would do in our neck of the woods was report is as a fire to get the volunteer firemen (who came the fastest, averaging less than five minutes). Most of those guys were EMTs or at least trained, so they could get stuff started. If someone needed to get to the hospital (over 45 minutes away), those guys would take them if they could and put on their lights.

Not everyone lives close by to a hospital, and we were known to speed on the back roads to get there faster.

So many here with stories of mad dashes to the Horse-pistol themselves.
Nobody calls 911 (the NUMBER, NOT the DATE) anymore? are the call centers closed?
In addition to getting a trained emotionally UNATTACHED driver to rush to the ER, there's usually a trained EMT or 2 in the back to tend to things.

Your taxes pay for these services, quit being Rugged Individualists and use them. Or do you all still believe those urban legends about getting $75,000 bills from the EMT's?

First time a made a mad dash was when I was sixty miles from nearest emergency services, one that didn't have a copter service, so rule out the airborne route. Friend had a severed femoral artery, plus lots of tissue damage due to cutting himself with a chainsaw. Now, I could have A: Done first aid to stop the bleeding, and then waited for over an hour for ambulance to get there, with another hour for the ride back to emergency room. Meanwhile, in this two hour period of time, friend's leg would be sustaining massive damage due to lack of blood for two hours, meaning that he could have easily lost the leg. Plus there is the danger from shock, infection, etc etc. Or B: I could have stopped the bleeding and stabalized him, loaded him in the truck and gone like a bat out of hell to the nearest ER myself, arriving within thirty five minutes of the injury, thus getting him real medical care an hour and twenty five minutes sooner, thus saving the leg, minimizing the effects of shock and other secondary problems. Sorry, but I valued my friend's life and limb, and went with option B.

Second time I made a mad dash was a year ago. My wife had whacked herself in the eye with a stick that flew back at her. She cried out, and by the time I reached her, her eye was swollen to the size of a golf ball and increasing, with a clear yellow fluid seeping out from under her eyelid. We were thirty miles from the nearest hospital that had an opthomologist on duty, and while an ambulance would have been there within twenty minutes, they would have taken her to the podunk little hospital nearby to "stablize" her before shipping her to the hospital with the opthomologist. Time was of the essence, her eye was continuing to swell, fluid was continuing to flow. I opted to dash down I-70 to the opthomologist, because having had a severe eye injury myself, and being trained in first aid, I knew that time was of the essence.

My wife can see from that eye today.

You cannot make blanket judgements like you're doing friend. You don't know the circumstances or the people involved. Let us see what you do when you're confronted with your own moment of crisis. While I agree that there are times when it isn't good to move the person, heart attacks and such, there are times when it is time to get up and move. You're acting like going ninety-hundred is a capital offense, it isn't. In fact I guarantee you that on I-70, ninety mph is more common than you'd be comfortable with. And they're not moving because of an emergency, just going to work.

There always has to be at least ONE Grizzly Addams in the bunch...

Comparing your experiences to mom throwing the 2-y-o in the car and high-tailing cross town to the hospital is like comparing Me band-aiding a blister to some guy in the Yukon taking out his own gall bladder. I seriously doubt most these people are 1 hour via med-evac from the nearest ER.

Yeah, and I've seen those wild-ass "Captains of Industry" in ther 100 mph commutes. I used to LIVE in Indy, remember? What do you think made me give up motorcycling? Old age?

...ambulance to arrive to apply first-aid and then take the child to the hospital? Some ambulances demand to be paid first before picking anyone up...have you thought about that?

You're still not getting the point about "blanket judgements", are you?

Ever hear the phrase "If it Don't Apply, let it FLY"?

" Some ambulances demand to be paid first before picking anyone up"

There YOU go, making a "blanket statement" yourself.

I haven't lived anyplace that didn't have taxpayer-funded ambulances since the 70's when Coltrin's FUNERAL HOME had the county ambulance contract. Not even in this little town of 2500.

It's hard to stand there and watch your kid scream and not be able to do anything.

Another thing is that not all ambulance drivers are kind. I had a panic attack. My mom called the ambulance that time and all but one of the paramedics were extremely cruel. The other one was extremely kind. Takes all kinds I guess.

The third thing is the money. An ambulance ride can easily be 1000 dollars. I think mine was somewhere in that range, but I honestly don't remember, my mom paid it that time thank God.

But mostly, I think it comes down to panic. People are panicking and they want to DO something. When you are scared for your kid, to be told to wait even 3-5 minutes is difficult.

The judge would throw it out so fast it would make the cop's head spin.

when someone needs to go to the hospital. The paramedics know how to evaluate such situations.

Lots of great thinking, discussion and examples all around!

:yourock: :woohoo: :applause:

and many people who are uninsured simply can't afford the outrageous costs of an ambulance ride. Being sick or injured in America isn't bad enough; you have to suffer economic melt-down because the system wants you to run up the bill as high as possible.

Ummm... hardly life threatening to a 9-year old. She was MUCH more likely to have killed them both rushing him to a hospital for a burn on the hand and foot. What a dunce. She deserves the ticket.

:)

The kid would not have died in the few minutes it would have taken her to drive legally, from a burn on the hand and foot.

... the burns looked, do you?

I'm always amazed at the number of people that want to be critical of the decisions made by others under stress and dealing with a bad sitiuation.

hand and foot in cold water right away and keeping them there for 10 minutes, then calling her doctor, rather than panicking and dashing off to the ER. Cooling off the area quickly helps to limit damage.

2nd degree burns are not *immediately* life threatening (especially in the absence of smoke inhalation). It's the complications that can develop later that are dangerous - esp. infection (and in the case of burns covering a *large* area, shock from fluid loss).

A little knowledge of basic first aid goes a long way ...

...thinking!

Guess what? She didn't know how bad the burns really were...unlike you, she was there and made the best decision possible based on what she was dealing with.