Polite Dissent

Roughly half of this week’s 52 takes place in a hospital. I’m going to take a brief look at those scenes from a medical point of view. There are plenty of spoilers below, so be warned.

As always, I find the the concept of a hospital devoted to superheroes fascinating. It’s been done before in the small press (Antarctic’s Metadocs most notably), but this is the first time I remember seeing it in one of the “big two.” Plus it’s always nice to see Dr. Midnite. Douglas over at 52 Pickup does a nice job explaining who St. Camillus was (and he’s right about the art as well — I think the majority of the problems I noticed were art related).

I genuinely enjoyed the hospital scenes. Please remember that as I proceed to nit-pick them to death.

1. Cyborg/Firestorm

• “Time-Freezing Drugs” — must be nice. (page 7)

2. Mal Duncan

• Why does he have cardiac electrodes on his abdomen and none on his chest? (page 8)
• Septicemia means that there are infectious bacteria running rampant in his blood stream. (page 8)
• Pseudocytes. Sounds like they’d work, in a science-fiction kind of way. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to give Mal standard transplant drugs to resist rejection since they’d lower his immune system, and he already has a nasty infection. (pages 8, 9)
• That’s sure a screwed up rhythm on the bed monitor. It looks like a nasty ventricular tachycardia. Regardless, it sure is convenient the way it starts and stops precisely within the confines of the monitor. (page 13, upper left)
• Counseling. Good call, Steel. It’s nice to see someone address the fact that healing is not always just physical. (page 13)
• It would be nice to know what kind of arrest Mal is in. It could be cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, or both. His heart rhythm was nasty, but remember Dr. Cross “didn’t like the sound of this young man’s breathing” (and why’s he complaining to the nurse rather than doing something about it?). If it is a cardiac arrest, it would be nice to know more, such as what kind of rhythm – if any – the heart is showing. The treatment varies depending the rhythm. (pages 13, 16)
• It looks like Mal’s gone into flash pulmonary edema, where the lungs quickly fill with fluid; this would explain the frothing at the mouth. (page 13, lower right)
• Full credit to the team for remembering the ABCs. Not only are they treating the heart (C = cardiac), but also the A and B (airway and breathing). (page 16, upper left)
• I was going to say that it’s nice to see Dr. Cross remembered to perform CPR, but then I noticed his hands: they’re in the wrong position and on the wrong part of the body. Also notice that the heart rhythm on the monitor looks good in this panel. At first I assumed that was the monitor of the next patient over, but page 8 shows no patient on that side of Mal. (page 16)
• Defibrillating (shocking) a patient in ventricular fibrilation or ventricular tachycardia is reasonable. It is not a good treatment for a patient in asystole (no heart rhythm). Defibrillation is a controlled application of direct current – enough to capture the heart rhythm, but not enough to fry the heart. I’m assuming Steel’s armor has all sorts of fancy equipment in it, because otherwise trying to restart someone’s heart using the AC current directly from a junction box would be foolish at best, but more likely lethal. (pages 16, 17)

3. Hawkgirl

• So she’s now 25 feet tall. This is the perfect example of the Square-Cube Law I mentioned last fall. She is now 4 times her normal size, but would weight 4³, or 64, times normal. Hawkgirl would barely be able to breath or pump blood. (page 6)
• I’m not sure what they’re doing with that giant electrical device on her chest — maybe it’s an external pump for her heart/lungs (?) – but I sure would have kept a twenty-five foot patient tied down. (page 16)