Help Needed

[Bob Prudhomme]

Not really the point Bob...

The Parkland ER staff was going to do any and everything to try and save JFK... With an acknowledged chest injury, tubes are SOP....

In reality the tracheotomy was alos a waste - but they tried everything. He was dead in the limo.

What are you trying to get at Bob?

No, it is completely the point, David.

Perry observed blood and air bubbling in the mediastinum, once he had made the tracheostomy incision. As JFK was NOT being ventilated with positive pressure oxygen at the time Perry was performing the tracheostomy, why would there be air bubbles in the mediastinum?

The mediastinum (from Medieval Latin mediastinus, "midway"[SUP][1][/SUP]) is the central compartment of the thoracic cavity surrounded byloose connective tissue, as an undelineated region that contains a group of structures within the thorax. The mediastinum contains the heart and its vessels, the esophagus, trachea, phrenic and cardiac nerves, the thoracic duct, thymus and lymph nodes of the central chest.



They would not be coming from the wound in the trachea, as any air escaping his trachea at this point would immediately escape through the wound opening in his anterior neck, and would NOT be trapped in the mediastinum.

No, David, air bubbles in the mediastinum could only indicate built up air pressure in one or both of JFK's pleural cavities (pneumothorax) and this build up of air pressure could only indicate chest damage FAR exceeding any light bruising of the top of JFK's right lung caused by a bullet passing through his neck.

Perry did the right thing, in response to his observations while performing the tracheostomy, by calling for chest tubes to relieve tension pneumothoraces.

However, for this kind of damage to JFK's right lung, a bullet would actually have to enter JFK's lung. If Humes was to admit this, there could be no back entry wound at C7/T1. The bullet would have to enter at T3. Not only would this destroy the Single Bullet Theory (which might not have been conceived yet on the night of the autopsy), there would be the greater mystery of why the bullet did not exit the front of JFK's chest. Once that cat was out of the bag, it would quickly be revealed that the reason this bullet did not exit was that the bullets shot at JFK were no ordinary full metal jacket round nosed bullets but were, instead, a very exotic type of bullet, unavailable to a minimum wage earner at the TSBD and designed for maximum killing power.

Small wonder Humes had to come up with the impossible "shallow" back wound that barely penetrated JFK's back more than an inch.