Let say that you fall off your stand and can’t get back up no matter how hard you try; but you are in luck because your buddy on the other ridge heard you screaming for help. You had already been hanging there trying to get up for the first 10 minutes of your suspension and it takes him another 10 minutes to get his climber down to the ground and run to where your hanging suspended. You tell him to hurry because the pain is excruciating and you are starting to feel short of breath and nauseated. It takes him a couple of minutes to climb your steps (be thankful that you weren’t using a climber too that is hanging half way between him and you) and he gets you around to where you can get your feet on the steps and once again stand after being suspended for almost 25 minutes. As you are holding on barely able to stand because your legs are completely numb, he cuts your tether and you both start back down the steps. Once on the ground, you are so tired from the ordeal that you lay down on the leaves to rest. In about 30 seconds you suddenly feel that you cannot breathe, you start gasping for breath and as your friend watches on in horror, you die right then and there and there is nothing anyone can do about it. So fellows, the lesson here is DON’T EVER LAY DOWN if you have been suspended even for a very short period of time. The owner of Blue Water Ropes in Georgia lost his friend in this exact same way. They weren’t hunting, they were caving and his friend got hung up suspended in a harness, he was fine until they got him down and when he lay down, he died in front of them. So your thinking how in the hell does that happen? Pretty easy because what once was blood in the legs has become a toxic sludge and it kills the heart. Here’s how. While suspended in a harness, you have now learned that the venous return of blood from the legs has been stopped and everything then just backs up. But what happens to this pooled and stagnant blood is like changing water to pudding. In the first couple of minutes all of the oxygen is used up out of the blood because it is never going to make it back to the heart and then to the lungs to get more. So it just sits there. How many of you have gutted a deer and seen all the big clots of blood that come out? This is because that blood had stopped being circulated. If you would cut open the big venous vessel in the deer you would see the same type of clotting of the blood. And while suspended in a harness this same thing will be going on in your legs. The blood can begin to form micro clots in as little as 6 seconds. So if you had been hanging there for 15 minutes that is 150 X more time than you need to start forming clots of your own. That’s not all, when the leg muscles have used up all the oxygen out of the blood, they still want to live so they start what is called anaerobic glycolysis, or no oxygen metabolism, or the muscle cells die too. And in the process of this last ditch survival plan, the muscle start dumping acids and toxins back into the blood as byproducts of anaerobic glycolysis. So what has started out as being oxygenated blood with nutrients for the cells to live has become a toxic sludge with clots and no oxygen and this accounts for almost half of your total blood volume. And if you lay down, all of this is going to go rushing back to the first part of your heart, into your lungs and then back to the second part of your heart. Your heart can’t breathe then either, it goes into a fatal arrhythmia and this sludge kills you deader than a door nail. And if you are very lucky and do survive this insult to the heart, 3 days later you may still possibly die or at least have to go on dialysis because of the damage that this sludge has done to the very sensitive kidneys. In the industrial work place that OSHA regulates, emergency response to a suspended worker is to be by 6 minutes and they are trained to never lay a person down that has been suspended. How long do you think you have? So now you know why if you are ever suspended in a harness for even a few minutes, DO NOT LIE DOWN! If you cannot stand, sit with your back up against a tree or at least stay on your elbows with your legs downhill from your body. This will allow a slow reintroduction of the toxic blood back into the system. You are going to feel very sick, you are going to feel like passing out and you will probably throw up, but you need to get back onto your feet as soon as possible and try to walk very slowly. The muscle contractions in your legs while you walk will force the blood to start circulating again slowly and you must get oxygenated blood back to the muscle cells in the legs to stop the anaerobic glycolysis and the dumping of toxins and the formation of micro clots. As the blood begins to circulate again, the body has ways of dissolving the small clots and the liver will filter all the toxins back out. So this is my last part on Suspension Trauma. You now know more about this subject than most of the doctors in your town. Knowledge is power and you now know enough to save your own life or someone else’s if ever confronted with this killer. Great hunting and be safe! Dr. Norman Wood
Rescue One CDS Thanks for the information, I have been in this very same situation for a 1/2 an hour. Lucky for me I didn't have the harness with the leg loops. I had the Tree Hopper Belt on as my stand broke and the platform gave way, I was unable to have the steps to step back onto. I was using lineman's spurs and they were hanging 2 feet above my head on a branch. I was able to continue to stick my hand between the rope of the Strap around my waist to allow circulation into my lower body. I've read horror stories about using a strap and I have been using one for 20 years and have had the same sort of accident happen 3 times in that span. I was able to eventually cut the rope of the harness and shimey down to the ground unscathed. I'll continue to use the Tree Hopper Harness for this simple reason now that you have made it clear about the harnesses that have leg straps. Great to get info that will save one's life. Thanks again Dr Norman Woods, thanks for taking the time to take into account every little aspect of the fall and situation and submitting your conclusion to a safer way of saving one's life. Great to get such life saving aspects of one's account of a what could turn into a critical situation. Rocky
