u/PembrokeLove

I know there are a lot of discussions about why we aren’t getting an update on Christa Pike’s condition, whether she experienced brain trauma, whether she’s on life support - and if so, why - and so I wanted to pop in and offer a bit of information on Nembutal overdose as I have seeen it in the post-trauma critical care setting.

Overdosing on a barbiturate like Nembutal (the trade name of pentobarbital) is quite different than overdosing on drugs like opiates that people are more familiar with. Nembutal is not only used in lethal injection; it is the primary component in euthanasia for animals, it is the most common drug (in oral form) used in MAID in the United States, and it is a simple barbiturate sleep aid. Its mechanism of action as a sleep aid is what may be responsible for the lack of updates we are getting from TNDOC.

Nembutal puts the brain into a deep sleep, in simplest terms, by quieting everything down. When a patient overdoses on this type of drug, they often come in with the appearance of brain death. There have been cases where a patient has arrived with no brain activity at all, and, as wild as this is going to sound, they have retained an absence of brain activity for as many as five days. So if you had a loved one overdose on this type of drug you might be encouraged to keep that person on life support for much longer than would be recommended with, for example, an overdose of opiates; a patient who is experiencing limited or no brain activity after having overdosed on fentanyl is gone, but a patient who is experiencing the same after having overdosed on Nembutal might well still be in there.

If Christa Pike is, as many suspect, on “life support” then they may keep her there for several days to see what brain activity resumes. She may never wake at all, she may have suffered hypoxic brain damage that forever changes her life, or she may wake up totally fine. It sounds crazy, but I’ve seen it happen.

This is just something I’ve had bouncing around in my head all night. While I have seen many overdoses in clinical settings, Pharmacology is absolutely not my area of specialty. I would be really interested to hear from someone for whom pharmacology is an area of expertise, or even from other people who have witnessed or experienced barbiturate overdose, to see your perspective on this. Do you think she’s totally cooked? What impact do you think the use of a single, barbiturate-class drug will have on her neurological outcome, if any at all?

May cross post to a pharmacology sub if I can find one where this discussion fits, but I thought for sure it would beeed discussion here. Thanks for reading!

Is it weird to anyone else that the hospital ghosts don’t have more clothing and stuff? We’ve seen at the school that the ghosts can change clothing and lift things they like, and the school has many, many fewer situations where people would shed clothing - pretty much only in gym class and during school plays and such. But at the hospital - everybody gets nekkid. There have to be SO MANY cool clothes that come through there!

I am well aware of how dumb this is. I was just thinking when the nurse was walking around with David and Kyle downstairs. It’s silly, but she could be in such finery! If I were here, I’d have snatched a dress off of someone like Hetty from Ghosts and rock that shit for eternity.