this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 week ago (18 children)

The heart beating is not a good definition of being alive in my opinion. The heart stopping temporarily doesn't mean you died, you were just in terribly grave danger.

If a person is defined by their heart, what does that make a heart transplant?

utterly useless definition.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My heart stops after every beat. Fortunately it has always started again before the next one....so far.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (3 children)

no, we should use the heart beating as a definition. why? because then I can say I'm undead and have died twice. that's very cool 😎 pls don't take that away from me 🥺 :(

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

But if you've died, then were undead, and then died again, you'd be un-undead right? So alive? It's basic double jeopardy.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

And how is lichdom treating you? Have you raised an army of skeleton warriors yet?

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"He's coding! I need a red bull, cargo shorts, and quiet classic rock, stat!"

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It reads like two Chatbots having a conversation

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Yeah the poster talking about "coding" is talking a bit of nonsense. "Coding" here is slang for "code blue" which is an American medical euphemism for cardiac arrest or medical emergency. Code blue is partially used to not cause alarm with patients (for example if tanoyed or if people overheard staff) and medical staff are familiar with it because its common in the US system. "Coding" is just a slang that medical staff say to each other and is a quasi medical term; its not an official term and would not be written in peoples notes for example.

And it is not an universal term. In the UK we call a cardiac arrest a cardiac arrest and put out an "arrest call". It is unambiguous and doesnt fall into a trap of creating other "codes" that become confusing. Similarly we have Trauma Calls for trauma teams and so on.

Some US hospitals apparently use a range of codes like code purple, code white, code gray etc. To my knowledge its not even standardised in the US or often between nearby hospitals (although code blue wouldn't have other meanings). I wouldn't be surprised if some US hospitals also don't use code blue at all anymore because it is unnecessarily ambiguous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Thank you for these insights!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

In the UK we call a cardiac arrest a cardiac arrest and put out an "arrest call". It is unambiguous

I'm pretty sure the emergency services have another kind of arrest

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Code on into the great beyond

[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To be fair, I wouldnt be that shocked to find out thats how the maintainer of some core library exists. Permanently on life support, because no one else can understand their code.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Basically the Emperor of Mankind, being kept alive else all of humanity as we know it is doomed.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago

I think you just described every COBOL programmers retirement.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

getting all the relevant equipment and personnel

Yeah, doesn’t sound like the kind of coding I’m familiar with.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

CPR doesn't bring a decompensated body back to life. You gotta figure out the problem in order to do that and fix it. That's what the algorithms we use in a code is for (as opposed to the algorithms you guys code). That's the real esoteric necromancy. Epi, bicarb, epi.

https://hospitalhandbook.ucsf.edu/04-comprehensive-acls-algorithm/04-comprehensive-acls-algorithm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (8 children)

But they are literally dead

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

being dead is surprisingly flexible with modern medicine

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Not having a heartbeat and not breathing doesn't mean you're dead. Intensive care departments are literally full of people with medically paralysed breathing muscles (i.e. not breathing) on ventilation machines. People go onto heart/lung bypass machines everyday to have heart surgery and their heart is stopped. You just need to keep oxygenated blood going around, keeping those tissues alive till you get the heart and breathing back online (this is what CPR is trying to do).

When the brain stem is dead tissue, then you're truly dead (but even then you can be kept "alive" artificially if you're already on a ventilation machine in a suitable intensive care).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

And they'll stay dead if all you do is CPR. CPR alone is closer to necrophilia than necromancy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Only when you stick your tongue in their mouth.

Which is fun, don't get me wrong, but sometimes things are busy and you don't have time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sometimes they only need a couple compressions

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Usually they're not dead when that happens. I personally have never had that happen in any of my codes but all my people are connected to continuous cardiac monitoring so I generally know what's happening before I even see them.

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