Description: A medical doctor describes what happens to the human body during crucifixion, and offers his thoughts.
What is crucifixion? A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy square wrought iron nail through the wrist deep into the wound. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is press backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now crucified. As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain-the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet. As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breath. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. It is now almost over-the loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level--the compressed heart is struggling to pump heart, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues--the tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues. Finally, he can allow his body to die... All this the Bible records with the simple words, “and they crucified Him” (Mark 15:24). What wondrous love is this? Many people don’t know that pain and suffering our Lord, Jesus Christ went through for us... because of the brutality; crucifixion was given a sentence to only its worst offenders of the law. Thieves, murderers, and rapists would be the types of creeps who got crucified. Yet, here Jesus is being crucified between two hardened criminals... What did Jesus do? Did he murder anyone? Did he steal anything? The answer as we all know is NO!! Jesus did nothing to deserve this type of death, yet he went willing to die, in between 2 thieves, so that we might be saved. And there, in between the sinners, was our slain savior for our sins.
The above pictures depict life on the streets. EMS (Emergency Medical Services) is a profession made up of EMT’s and Paramedic’s who respond to these types of injuries far too often. They deal with accidents, suicides, homicides and many types of other trauma and injury. The photos utilized on this page are a strong illustration of the devastation that the men and women of EMS respond to. A survey of 51 states in the United States shows an average yearly income that these men and women is approximately $27,000.00.
They respond to these types of injuries on an average of 3.5 times per week per medic. This site’s page intention is to provide a three prong approach
1.) Education (you must have the ability to deal with all types of traumatic situations, dealing with horrific pain and suffering)
2.) Reference Material (many EMS Educators have requested permission to use these images for in class presentation)
3.) Public Service (these pictures demonstrate irresponsible behavior such as failure to wear seat belts, the cause and effect of drinking and driving, the cause and effect of violence use guns, knives and physical abuse.)
I conducted a site poll over 2003, 659 individuals responded to the following question;
Many EMS and Fire related magazine’s share traumatic injury photo’s for both educational and public service resources. The poll question stated as follows: Should this provide the same type of data? Yes= 329 No= 217 Not Sure= 113
This site page contains a notice before viewing any material on this page:
“Disclaimer”
“Some people might find some of the photos too graphic for their tastes. There are photo’s if choose to continue which contains graphic images of extensive trauma. The photos are real to life traumatic injuries. If you do not which to view, DO NOT PROCEED!! This is actual trauma seen by EMT’s and Paramedic’s “life and death on the Streets.”
Case reviews for various trauma photos are and will be added to the data, including mechanism and treatment.
This is life on the Streets.
TO OUR FELLOW CITIZENS FROM YOUR CITIES MEDICS
We’re sorry if we wake you in the middle of the night,
but someone in your neighborhood is fighting for their life.
Sometimes someone is choking, sometimes a child in need,
sometimes a heart stops beating, sometimes we watch you grieve.
So if you catch our sadness when we thought we were alone
you’ll know we’ve had a “bad one” and our emotions we postpone.
You ask us how we do it, “I couldn’t do that stuff”.
We’ll keep on answering your call, even when the going gets tough.
Somewhere deep within us, our souls are crying out
“we’re here to help our neighbor, that’s what we are about.”
God gave us something special to help us see you through.
We are there because we fight to save a life, and it is our extensive
training that sees you through, this is who we are and what we do.
"What do you do for a living?" my neighbor asked me. I told him my usual reply, "I'm a Paramedic. I work on an ambulance." Without fail, the reaction is always the same: "I could NEVER do that!" I think anyone in EMS has had this exact same conversation a thousand times.
What I find interesting though is the variety of answers you get when you ask "why". Some mention they don't like people enough to help them, others mention the hours and sitting in an ambulance all day without a station, but most people have a big hang-up with the gore.
The other day I had one of the goriest calls of recent memory and I found myself puzzled at the prospect that the blood and the smell and the guts didn't bother me, but the "gore" itself did. This may sound strange as most people look at those two things as one in the same, but to me they are distinctly different.
It was a busy Friday night and my partner and I were laughing about how bad my driving was this particular night. Over the past couple of weeks I had a lot on my mind and I wasn't myself on shift. When I am patient man, I usually snap myself right into work mode, however when I drive it doesn't hold the same interest for me and I tend to get scatterbrained now and then. We heard the firefighters radio channel dispatch out a man with a gun threatening suicide and we happened to be in the area. Not long after we were sent to the same call and we were advised to stage for the police.
Staging is quite possibly one of the greatest benefits of being on the ambulance. The police go in first, make sure everything is safe, then tell us to come in. It adds an element of safety to our job that so many people take for granted. Tonight was one night I'm glad we staged. We parked behind the fire truck around the corner awaiting word from the police to come in and handle the psych evaluation. I had my feet crossed as I slouched in the seat getting comfortable anticipating a long standoff and my partner chatted with his girlfriend on the cellular phone. We had been there about 10 minutes when we heard "bang". Chaos ensued.
About 30 seconds after the shot, we were frantically being waved in by the police officers and lead to the man laying on the ground in a pool of blood. One of the officers ran along side of us saying "He shot himself in the left temple with an exit on the right side of his skull." We rushed to his side with the fire department and we could hear a rescue (paramedics) getting dispatched to our call.
As we approached the scene the police on scene yelled to stop. ahead of us was the weapon about 1 foot in front of our stretcher that we almost ran over. My partner and I looked at each other and let out a sigh of relief that some one noticed us before we contaminated the crime scene.
The fire guys were already next to the patient who much to our surprise was still talking or at least trying to talk. He was mumbling as blood filled his mouth from the bullet's puncturing the sinuses. Everyone seemed stunned watching this man die as no one was doing any definitive care. I yelled at one of the firefighters to suction his airway while another grabbed an airway adjunct. I laid the backboard down next to the patient and instructed my partner to get a bag valve mask ready. I told them to load him quick and I'll go set up some I.V.s.
I ran to the ambulance and set up two I.V.s and the firefighters came screaming around the corner with the patient. They loaded him in still frantic from the nature of the call. I instructed one to check for a pulse, he said there is none and was going to get the defibrillator. I told him to forget the defibrillator and start CPR. My partner was starting an IV as the rescue arrived. After a brief report we were off to the hospital.
As I pulled away I looked back and saw several officers trying to console this man's wife. He was 65 years old and he shot himself in front of her, ending a 5 year battle with depression. I remembered realizing that with his depression coming to such a violent end, she will now carry on his pain with a violent beginning to her own depression.
Despite the lousy night I had with driving I had my focus back for this drive. It seemed as though I could see every bump miles before we reached them, and made a safe quick trip to the trauma center.
15 minutes after arrival, at 4:03AM, our patient was pronounced dead by the trauma doctor. We all left the room a bit quietly after looking at the devastation a single bullet caused to this man's head. The right side was completely open and his skull was shattered. Much of his brain and fallen out the side and there were many small shreds of gray matter on the floor. We knew that the mess in the back of the ambulance would have to be handled at the main ambulance hub so we threw the unclean stretcher back in and made way for home.
As we arrived I opened the back doors and had a look at the big mess. There was blood everywhere and small pieces of brain matter. Giant pools of clotted blood making long stretches of half solid/half liquid blood near the corners and the stretcher catch. I grabbed a rag mumbling about the mess when as I started to throw pieces away it dawned on me. This wasn't a mess I was cleaning up, this was a person I was cleaning up. These little pieces of his brain once held hopes, dreams, aspirations, and his memories. It was somewhat saddening to think of it this way, but once I had begun, I couldn't think of it otherwise.
It took over an hour and a half to get the back cleaned up. Blood was everywhere. We estimate he lost about 2/3 of his blood in the back of our truck. I had cleaned up blood, guts, vomit, and even stool one time from the back of the truck. This time though there was a definite sadness to things. It didn't gross me out to pick up his remains, but rather it saddened me to hold a piece of his 65 years of life, a memory that no money could buy, or a dream that was never realized, gone with a gentle squeeze of a handgun.
Author Steve Jensen
Dear Dave,
On September 10, 1993, a group of people I'd never met before saved my life—and my son's.
They weren't firemen, EMT’s or Paramedics nor members of the local police force. They had been blood donors. I hope my story will encourage you to give someone else the gift of life. As a blood donor myself, I can tell you there is not a better, easier way to touch someone’s life in a truly immeasurable way.
In 1993 my husband and I were ecstatic to learn that we were expecting a baby on Christmas Day. Everything was going well, until September 10. My water broke and the doctors had to deliver my son four months early. The doctors told my husband and me that our son had only a 20 percent chance of survival. I lost a lot of blood and it took several blood transfusions to save both of our lives.
Branden will turn 16 this year. He's happy, healthy, and a member of his high school's varsity golf team. To look at him, you’d never know his birth was anything out of the ordinary.
But that’s why donating blood is so important: tragedy could strike at any time, and you never know who is going to need your help. It could be your mother, your father, your husband, your wife—or even your child.
I was a regular blood donor before my son was born, and I’m still a regular blood donor today. In fact, I’ve already given this month at a Red Cross blood drive in my home town.
When I ask people who haven't given blood before why they've never donated, can you guess the response I hear most often? "No one's ever asked me before."
I’m asking you now. Dave, please join me and donate blood.
Thank you,
Karen Kerr
Proud American Red Cross Blood Donor since 1975
