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"[...] 'I can't breathe' is the last thing people push out before they are too breathless to say a single word. It's said with a gasp. It has a certain cadence and intonation. 'I can't breathe' sets my heart racing like almost no other patient utterance, because I've seen what follows.
[...]
"Everything else that was paramount a minute before goes away with 'I can't breathe.' An attending holding on the phone, your bladder is exploding, an angry patient wants a word. No matter. 'I can't breathe' means drop it all, clear your head, go and fix it.
"I do not remember a time when 'I can't breathe' was anything other than an elementally intolerable sound to me. No doubt my training and experiences have honed any instinct I started with, and shaped my exact responses to that signal.
"But it doesn't take an ER doc's ear to recognize that signal, does it? It's a fellow human in distress. Someone who has only enough air in his lungs to say one thing, who chooses those exact three words, 'I can't breathe,' surely everyone can hear what I hear in that?"
-- Dr. Esther AT LEAST WEAR A MASK Choo (choo_ek), 2020-05-26
(no subject)
(no subject)
I have a dream ...
. . . not too long from now,
. . . . we will live in a free,
. . . . . open and healthy society,
. . . . . . where all are valued and safe.
Time to shut down "Prison - U.S.A."
(no subject)
They moved fast and got me taken care of. One of them told my husband I'd have been dead in about a half hour if he hadn't brought me in when he did. (Heart arrhythmia/afibrillation leading to pulmonary edema - tons of fun, really). But all I could say was "I can't breathe."
All the nurses moved like lightning when they heard me say it.
(no subject)
Unfortunately this does not seem to be the way some police are trained to think, or to put it another way, perhaps their natural tendency to see POC suspects as fellow human beings is trained out of them.