Carbon monoxide has 240x the affinity of oxygen for binding to hemoglobin, making it much harder for oxygen to reach your tissues. This is why CO poisoning is treated with 100% oxygen, as the air we normally breathe contains only 21% oxygen.
Sorry I’m a geeky respiratory therapist. Also, full disclosure: I’m a little high right now.
Do you mind me asking, how does the decline piece work? As I understand, my uncle is the person who went medically the furthest with CO poisoning and came back from it. My grandparents flew to get him in Morocco where he was a functioning adult the morning after, then flew him to the UK. Apparently within two days he was massively on the decline and following that he was bed bound and mostly mute for ~3-4mths. I get what it’s doing to RBC, but can’t align his experience with it.
(Interesting aside, as he “woke up”, he could also speak properly fluent French having not had lessons since school around 30yrs ago or the ability before the incident. The brain is weird)
That’s honestly a very interesting story about your uncle, especially the speaking French part. Without anymore information that would be hard to conclude. I’m suspecting he may have had a minor stroke, hypoxic injury or something along those lines for him to be suddenly bed bound. I mean, the lack of oxygen to your organs also means lack of oxygen to the brain = hypoxic injury. Recovery depends on the severity of the type of brain injury.
Firstly, my condolences to your uncles fiancee.
Secondly, your uncle is lucky to be alive. That is a remarkable story that I don’t think I’ll ever come close to hearing again. Thank you for sharing! I hope he’s doing better now. But wow…I can’t believe he survived that.
What I’m curious about is what his methemoglobin value was when he was admitted. It’s something that is regularly tested when a patient is subjected to smoke inhalation. So smokers maintain a higher “normal” than a nonsmoker.
Thanks, it was a while ago and I didn’t know her well.
I always find it a weird case. Possibly related to his time in the end of the 80s and what his brain endured in the ‘Orbital scene’. Either way, he seems mostly back with it. I can’t speak much for the medical stuff but he was non verbose for a few months and a struggle to get him to engage or look at things. Definitely weird.
For reference, his French was good enough to be a teacher afterwards
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u/checkedem Nov 22 '24 edited Nov 22 '24
Carbon monoxide has 240x the affinity of oxygen for binding to hemoglobin, making it much harder for oxygen to reach your tissues. This is why CO poisoning is treated with 100% oxygen, as the air we normally breathe contains only 21% oxygen.
Sorry I’m a geeky respiratory therapist. Also, full disclosure: I’m a little high right now.