Jab to the heart
I recently watched After Earth. It’s a good movie. When I first saw it at the movie theatre I was surprised that Will Smith didn’t do the action in the movie. Rather, that was up to his son, Jaden, who is shaping up to be a terrific actor like his dad.
Anyhoo, there is one part in the movie that made me cringe. Not in a “that’s yucky” kind of way, but in an “oh no you did not just go there - sigh” kind of way.
The ol’ jab a needle in the heart trick.
Kitai (Jaden) has been poisoned by a nasty slug, and is instructed by his dad (both actual dad and storyline dad) to inject the clear liquid from the med kit directly into his heart. Then he has to follow this up by injecting the other liquid, once again straight into his heart.
The thing is, if you try this you are very likely to kill yourself.
So don’t try it at home.
Think about it. You stick a needle in your heart. What do you now have? A hole in your heart. When was that ever a good thing???
To be fair, intracardiac (= within the heart) injections have been given in the past, by inserting a very thin needle through the fourth intercostal space (between the ribs) and into the ventricular chamber (the lower chambers of the heart). This was, however, done very sparingly and only by trained medical personnel, and also only if the heart had completely stopped and all other options had been exhausted. Since about 1990, no doctor would ever treat a patient by stabbing them in the heart.
If you try it yourself you’re likely to also puncture a lung. So as well as bleeding out through the hole you just made in your heart, you probably will be very short of breath as you bleed to death.
There are much better ways to get medicine into your system. The preferred method is intravenously. Think IV drip, into the patient’s vein. Given that it only takes about a minute for blood to be pumped around your body, this will get the medication to the heart pretty quickly. And as it’s going into a vein, the direction it’s travelling is back to the heart, so really you just shaved off 30 seconds from the minute-long round-trip.
If IV isn’t an option, a lot of drugs can simply be delivered to any muscle group in order to have them (the drugs, not the muscle) reach the heart in just a few minutes.
So Hollywood, why must you insist on feeding us with this silly save-your-life technique? I remember it from way back, when Nicolas Cage had to get adrenalin straight to his heart to combat the effects of a nerve gas in the movie The Rock (also a good movie, by the way). And I’m sure there are other movies that portray a similar context.
Now don’t get me wrong, I realise movies aren’t all real and I appreciate a zoning out with a good movie as much as anyone. But to use such a silly idea is a pet peeve of mine. And that’s my rant.