Call me mean or hard-hearted but these kids deserve a darwin award for playing this choking game and end up killing themselves. Let me give you some background on my statement. I am an Emergency Medical Technician and I routinely get calls where people have injured or even killed themselves due to blatant stupidity. I would think that a 13 or 14 year old would know the consequences of asphyxiating themselves. Doing it for the rush or just because its fun doesnt make it ok. They dont realize that everytime that they lose consciousness they lose roughly 100 brain cells, and for every minute they are down they lessen their chanes of surviving a cardiac arrest by 20%, 10% for adults. If they do go into to cardiac arrest they have less than one half of one percent chance of surviving the ordeal. 9 out of 10 times the person survives and becomes a vegetable much like the infamous Terri Schiavo. I hope to never work a code on a child that decided to asphyxiate themselves because its fun. These kids are a health hazard to themselves and possibly younger kids that look up to them.
Sarah, as a fellow parent I am truly sorry for your loss, and it is never right that a parent should have to bury their child.
-C.A. Terry, NREMTB, AREMT-A
