Okay, I am half-watching the “Emergency” marathon on TVLand, and in nearly every episode so far, they’ve used ‘Ringers lactate with D5W’ (or something like that). Who is this Ringers person, what is ringers lactate and why is it used for nearly every situation (apart from being convenient for the writers)?
Gah. I hate when the half of the title disappears. Sorry!
I’ve only heard of it refered to as “Ringer’s solution,” but I believe it to be the same thing. IIRC, it’s a saline solution with a concentration gradient equal to that of blood. It is administered to patients intravenously and since it is isotonic (not hypertonic or hypotonic) the blood cells don’t shrivel or explode. This allows them to get to the hospital alive and receive some real blood.
Isotonic?
Hypertonic?
Hypotonic?
Huh?
They don’t have subtitles for the medical-vocabulary impaired.
And yeah, they just said ‘ringers solution’. Maybe it was on a later-filmed episode with what I thought I heard.
‘Shriveled Blood Cells’ sounds like a band.
Ok, follow-up post.
Isotonic = equal proportion of water both in the blood cell and in the Ringer’s Solution (RS).
Hypertonic = greater proportion of water inside the blood cell than with the surrounding RS. This leads to a shriveled blood cell because the water diffuses out and leaves the blood cell with less water inside to give it some shape.
Hypotonic = lesser proportion of water inside the cell than in the surrounding RS. Water from RS diffuses into the cell, expanding the cell membrane, leading to an explosion of the cell in some cases. Fun, right?
This info is a year old in my brain. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll get slapped around.
We’re watching it too! MrKinsey and LittlestKinsey are addicted. (Ok, I like it, too.)
Isn’t the “D5W” part some sort of dextrose or sugar solution?
They use Ringer’s lactate with D5W on ER, too.
D5W is 5% dextrose in pure water. Ringer’s Lactate is a mix of salts in water, basically isotonic saline with lactate (a salt of lactic acid). D5LR is the two of them combined.
Here’s a site with several IV fluids defined:
http://gucfm.georgetown.edu/welchjj/netscut/fen/ivfluids.html
Arjuna34
Thanks for all the info. I love this board!
Now I can get back watching the show to determine the answer to the more important question: on the show, who gets injured more, Johnny or Roy?
:sniff, sniff, sob:
I was watching this marathon at a friend’s house until I had to come to work. My favorite show! And no cable in my area. Waaaaahhhh! Somebody tell me it isn’t as good as I remember.
I do not want to be rude, but Screech-Owl, did you try to type <search ringer’s lactate> in the address bar and hit Enter? I just did that and got 732 links.
I have noticed that Engineer Mike Stoker and Dr. Mike Morton are the only principal characters on Emergency! who were never hospitalized themselves. So are they major or minor?
Not a rude question at all, but I should have been clearer - I wanted something a heckuva lot less technical, which Arjuna34 and AETBOND417 so graciously provided.
And activgirl, it’s still fun to watch years later (I liked Roy).
dougie_monty - I’d say minor/secondary characters - they’re not even listed on the Nick at Night website.
Mike Stoker was an actual Los Angeles County firefighter. The producers of the show did not want actors driving fire apparatus, so they used real firefighters to do the driving.
Not only my all-time favorite show, but the one that I credit getting me into this profession to begin with. I should thank my grandmother (rest her soul) for making me and my cousin watch it when we were young. Now we both crawl into burning buildings. Gotta love Hollywood.
Here’s a pretty good site for those Emergency fans out there like me:
You can tell I’m ancient, 'cause I always think of Emergency! as just a later knock-off of Rescue 8.
KCB615 - thanks for the site! And keep up the ood work. I’ve lost a couple of friends to fires (one was a fireman), so I more than appreciate what you folks do.
tomndebb - what was Rescue 8, when and on what network did it air?
I never saw it, but wasn’t Rescue 8 about a mountain rescue team (possibly forest rangers?) back in the mid-to-late 1950s? For some reason I think it was on NBC, but thats a complete WAG.