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The Death of Mike Reisman on the Ocoee River
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"I had to learn the hard way...to let her pass by." - The Grateful Dead
This is the story of the death of Mike Reisman just below Double Trouble on
the Ocoee on November 1, 1997.
I wanted to write to you about Mike's death for a couple of reasons. For
good or for ill, I helped work on Mike out there on the middle of the river,
and my main concern here is setting the record straight about what was a very
wierd and tragic situation. I've also found writing to be a very theraputic
pastime...and given the fact that I'm still a little bit freaked out about
the whole thing, I need this.
Closing weekend of the 1997 season on the Ocoee was November first and
second, and I had planned to paddle it for the last time this season on
November first. When I arrived, at something like 2:00, the weather was
still sunny and warm. I made a fairly quick run because of increasing clouds
and dropping temperatures, and I was off the river at approximately 3:30.
I hitched a ride up to the putin, but as our car passed the shoals about 1/4
mile below Double Trouble (if memory serves...I don't know the name of the
shoals and things were a little fast and strange for me to be giving too much
thought to landmarks), a guy ran out into the road and flagged down our car.
He said that a guy was hurt in the middle of the river, and asked for a cell
phone.
I used to be a volunteer firefighter and First Responder for a department
right outside Chattanooga, and while I've let my certifications lapse,
sometimes small help is better than none. So I jumped out of the car,
scrambled down the rockpile to the riverside, borrowed a boat, and ferried
out into to the rock ledge in the middle of the shoals. When I got there, a
couple of rescuers were just beginning to work on Mike. One of them, thank
God, was a doctor...and I'll write more about him in just a second.
They said that Mike had been ferrying across the shoals and had gotten
flipped...and that while he was underwater he had taken a blow to the head
which either knocked him unconscious or rendered him otherwise helpless. If
I remember right, they said he was underwater for sixty seconds or so. The
doctor reached Mike's boat and tried to flip it upright but was unable to,
and was also unable to pop Mike's spray skirt. He said that Mike had left
the grab loop tucked inside.
So the doctor did the next thing he could think of, which was to unsheath his
PFD knife and to cut across the lap of the spray skirt. By doing so he was
able to pop the skirt and get Mike out of the boat, but this was when things
went wildly wrong...because the doctor cut too deeply and opened a long, deep
gash high up on the inside of Mike's right thigh.
And that was pretty much the situation when I first got there...three or four
people were dragging him out of the water and onto a small rock ledge, and
they were trying to control the bleeding.
Mike was responsive when I got there, although it was obvious that he was
confused and in pain. The doctor was holding compression on Mike's leg
wound, which was generally keeping the bleeding under control, and at his
direction we made Mike as comfortable as possible with our PFDs and began to
improvise a tourniquet. I wound up holding pressure on Mike's femoral artery
at his groin while someone else cut webbing for the tourniquet. We applied
the tourniquet and continued the femoral pressure and the direct pressure on
the wound. Although the blood was mixed with water, it didn't seem to be
arterial...it was pretty dark in color and was mixed with a lot of fluid that
looked typical of deep tissue injury. The doctor said he didn't think the
femoral artery had been hit.
As I held pressure (and then held tension on the tourniquet), I checked out
Mike's head wound, and it looked like he had slammed his head pretty
well...he had a lump on his left temple the size of a fifty-cent piece which
projected perhaps a half-inch and was an ugly shade of purple. It was just
exactly in that spot which is all too easy to expose if you're letting your
chin strap ride a little loosely. I checked his pupil dilation, and while
his pupils seemed wide to me, they also seemed equally dilated.
While we were working on Mike we kept talking to him...we were telling him
that he'd be OK, we were saying his name, and we were trying to get him to
talk back to us. He would occasionally screw up his face in pain. At first
he was responsive to us...he answered questions, he reached out to hold our
hands, and he complained of discomfort. But as time wore on (and the
numbers of paddlers surround us grew), he began slipping. He complained of
the cold, his tight clothing, and his inability to breathe. "I can't see,"
he kept saying. We tried to sit him up in order to make his breathing
easier...I was sitting on the rock with my arms around him and his head laid
back on my shoulder...but he only got worse...he quit talking and became
mostly unresponsive to us.
It was clear to us that we might save Mike from blood loss only to lose him
to shock, so at the doctor's direction we moved him from the small rock ledge
to a larger one which was close by. Some of us had to wade through water to
get there, and we had to be painstakingly careful not to drop Mike, because
he was a pretty big guy and he was wet and slippery.
Park rangers were arriving at the road across the river from us as we were
moving Mike. We got him laid out flat (with legs elevated...I was holding up
his left one), and while the doctor continued to maintain pressure on the leg
wound we began to demand blankets, fleece, jackets, and anything else we
could get to try to keep Mike warm. There wasn't much of anything to use
except PFDs...everyone was soaked and a cold rain had begun to fall.
Right about this time a paramedic named Tiger who had been out paddling
joined us on the rock and went to work. He was a big help. He and the
doctor kept checking Mike's breathing and pulse. Finally, someone arrived
with a spine board and a cervical collar, and we got Mike strapped onto the
board. Tiger put the c-collar on him.
Mike lapsed into unconsciousness, and the doctor quickly turned management of
the wound over to a bystander and crouched by Mike's head. "Don't do this,
Mike...Don't do this..." he repeated. Mike's breathing slowed, and then
stopped, and the doctor and Tiger began artifical respiration and chest
compressions.
At this point, somebody with a bullhorn on the shore told us that a raft was
at Double Suck, and that the raft had been directed to hurry to where we were
and ferry Mike across.
Mike began to vomit, and the doctor and Tiger were having to stop CPR. Since
he was on the backboard, it wasn't too difficult to turn him onto his side so
that the doctor could sweep his airway clear. We had to do this two or three
times.
Someone arrived with a rescue basket, which is like a really long, shallow,
plastic bathtub. We lifted Mike into the rescue basket and strapped him in
while the doctor and Tiger continued to administer CPR. Right about then the
raft arrived. As they lined up by the rock, we lifted Mike in, and the
doctor jumped in and continued chest compressions. I watched from the rock
as the raft ferried him across the river and as the spectators helped lift
the rescue basket up the rockpile to the road. Paramedics rushed Mike into
the the back of the ambulance and immediately began working to try to
stabilize him.
The raft came back across to the rock, and I hitched a ride back over to the
shore. After I climbed the rockpile, I asked one of the responding firemen
for some alcohol foam to sterilize my hands with, and then I waited by the
ambulance. I noticed that the ambulance was rocking back and forth, which
meant that the paramedics were administering chest compressions inside. And
although I didn't check my watch, they must have worked on him for twenty or
more minutes before they took off.
We stood around on the scene for a while. Lance, some of the other park
rangers, the state troopers, and couple of the paramedics collected some
information. I gave them my name, number, and address.
The doctor felt like shit. He told me he was mad at himself, and although
the normal cliches like "You did the best you could", "You did everything
right", and "That was a terrible scene" were all close at hand, all I could
do was squeeze his shoulder and shake my head. I watched as he rode away
with one of the park rangers.
And so now they're reporting on the news that Mike Reisman died of blood loss
resulting from a severed femoral artery.
I don't believe that, although we'll never know for sure. I'm told the
family has apparently declined to have an autopsy conducted. I think only
one thing killed Mike...the utter lack of proper equipment to treat shock on
an isolated scene. We had the training, we had the people, we had (barely)
enough room to work. But none of that was enough.
I've seen a lot of people in shock, and they always react differently. Some
act crazy, some mumble to themselves, some shake, some wander around like
zombies. Some simply go to sleep.
Like Mike.
That's the end of this story.
I'm sorry.
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