Sunday, May 12, 2013

BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING VICTIMS-WHO CARES NOW? PICTURES YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE


 REST IN PEACE

Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard, and Lu Lingzi



The Boston Marathon Bombing was another tragic attack on innocent human beings by animals that prey on hurting, maiming, killing others. 

This blood bath happened on April 15, 2013, killing three and wounding more than 170 people. 

The victims were identified in the above pictures as 29-year-old Krystle Campbell (left), 8-year-old Martin Richard (center) and 23-year-old Lu Lingzi (right). 

Martin, of Dorchester, Mass., was with his family near the finish line waiting for his father to complete the marathon. 

Campbell, of Medford, Mass., went with her best friend to take a picture of the friends boyfriend crossing the finish line. 

Lu, of Shenyang, China, was a graduate student studying statistics at Boston University

Today is May 12, 2013, almost a month after this bombing. People forget about the dead victims, and those who are struggling to survive with their injuries.

The media frenzy has quieted down as usually happens after these horrific acts of violence. One is hard pressed to read or see anything about the victims in the current media.

Almost all the coverage now is focused on the 2 animals who set off the bombs because they didn't like Americans, or whatever bull shit is being fed to the public by the media. 

Politicians and lobbyists use the blood of these victims for their own personal agendas, grotesquely twisting what has happened, without any feelings about the victims and their families.

Sadly, there are so many stories to tell about all of these victims and how their lives have been changed forever.

How can their agony, terror, and courage be written about so that others understand what happened that day will never be erased from the minds and bodies of these victims and their families?

Similar to the Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hill School Massacre, how many people remember the victims, other than their families? Click Here-

I have been grappling for a way to make people remember that victims and their families have to live with their tragedies forever, while the rest of the public forgets, does not even understand the suffering that has and will take place.

In trying to not disrespect the Boston Bombing victims I have wrestled within myself as to what to do with the mostly unpublished pictures of the human carnage that took place that day.

I believe that you cannot sugar coat or censor the true horrific nature of what takes place when people become victims. I do understand that some people may feel it shows a lack of respect for the victims by showing pictures.

I also personally know from my own experiences that when the violence, ugliness, and suffering of victims is diluted, sanitized, it is far more disrespectful of those who have been harmed because it does not accurately reflect what has happened to these human beings. It then becomes another easy way for people to disconnect,forgetting those who must be remembered. 

WARNING-CAUTION GRAPHIC CONTENT-You need to be warned that these are bloody gruesome pictures- WARNING-CAUTION GRAPHIC CONTENT.

DO NOT CLICK ON HERE TO VIEW THESE PICTURES UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THIS IS GRUESOME.

If anyone has any sympathy for the Tsarnaev brothers, the pictures above should dispel it. Everyone needs to see the results of their actions. These pictures say more than any words could about the evil of these murderers and what being a victim of ANY tragedy actually experience.

I wrote a previous story about 8 year old Martin Richard who was one of the 3 people killed in the bombing-CLICK HERE.

The Boston Marathon bombings, also injured more than 260 people, with many of the victims suffering complex wounds that are causing intense pain and that will require several more operations.

Thirty-one victims still remain hospitalized at the city’s trauma centers, including some who lost legs or feet. 

Sixteen people had limbs blown off in the blasts or amputated afterward, ranging in age from 7 to 71. But in a way, their cases are the simpler ones, said Dr. David King, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

For some whose limbs were preserved, Dr. King said, the wounds were so littered with debris that five or six operations have been needed to decontaminate them.“The idea is to spread out the physiological stress over multiple operations,” he said.

Some of the wounded also still need surgery to repair bones, veins and nerves. Many will need physical therapy as well. 

About 10 patients have already arrived at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, said Timothy Sullivan, a spokesman, and that number could soon double.

For many of the wounded, managing pain is a constant challenge. Dr. Alok Gupta, a trauma surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the hospital was giving patients oral and intravenous narcotics and, where possible, regional nerve blocks using catheters.

Dr. King said that for those who lost limbs, so-called phantom pain, which feels as if it is coming from the body part that is no longer there, can be excruciating and particularly hard to treat.“You have to balance between taking the pain away,” he said, “and them being interactive and able to participate in their own rehabilitation.”

The ailments are not just physical. Some patients are upbeat, doctors said, but others are angry, anxious and depressed.

Joan Smith, the manager of social work services at Tufts Medical Center, said that virtually all of the 14 victims who came through the hospital were experiencing acute stress disorder.“

I also personally did a lot of work with family members who were trying to be strong for their children but at the same time were falling apart behind closed doors,” said Ms. Smith, who made sure all the patients and their families had a list of mental health specialists to contact if they felt the need.

Dr. Scott Ryan, chief of orthopedic trauma at Tufts, said he could not stop thinking about how traumatic it must have been for the victims, most of whom remained conscious after the blasts, to see the extent of their wounds as they were raced to hospitals.

“The most disturbing thing for me in treating these patients is that they were awake after it happened and looked down and saw these terrible wounds,” he said. “Most of the time, patients with that bad injuries, they’re from a car accident or motorcycle accident and by the time they get to hospital they’re not with it enough to look down and say, ‘Oh my God, look what happened to my leg.’ ”

Those still hospitalized include Heather Abbott, 38, whose left foot, mangled in the first blast, was initially saved by doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She chose to have her leg amputated a few inches below the knee this week, after doctors essentially told her that life would be harder with the foot than without it.

“I walked maybe 10 feet today on a walker and everybody was so proud of me,” Ms. Abbott, a human resources manager from Newport, R.I., told reporters at the hospital on Thursday. “And I thought, ‘Oh gosh, this is going to be a long time.’ ”

Fund-raising Web pages for some victims describe their physical and emotional ordeals in raw detail. A page for Christian Williams, 41, an art director whose legs were gravely injured as he stood near the marathon finish line, included a note from Mr. Williams in which he described how he felt after his fourth operation on Monday. 

Although the doctors “managed to get my right leg closer to being closed,” he wrote, “the meds weren’t working and I couldn’t hide from the pain.”

A video posted on a fund-raising page for Celeste Corcoran, 47, who lost both legs below her knees, shows her meeting with Sgt. Gabe Martinez, a Marine who lost his lower legs and came to give her a pep talk. “I can’t do anything right now,” Ms. Corcoran told him tearfully.

Sergeant Martinez, who walked into her room at Boston Medical Center on prosthetic legs, replied: “Right now, yes. But I’m telling you with all my heart, you are going to be more independent than you ever were.”

At Spaulding, the rehab hospital, a team of doctors, nurses, psychologists and physical therapists will focus exclusively on the bombing victims, many of whom will be fitted with prosthetic legs while they are there. Inpatient rehabilitation usually lasts a few weeks, said Dr. Ross Zafonte, Spaulding’s chief medical officer, although some of these patients will be there longer. 

Months of outpatient rehabilitation will follow, “They’re learning to walk with a prosthetic, regain balance, take care of that extremity, perform their own activities of daily living,” Dr. Zafonte said. “They have to deal with all of those rather life changing issues rather quickly.”

Ryan McMahon, 33, who fractured her back and broke both wrists when she fell off the stands at the finish line in the panicked moments after the explosions, is starting her long recovery at her grandmother’s home in Newton, Mass. 

Sitting straight up on her grandmother’s couch on Thursday afternoon, her back supported by a brace and one arm by a pile of pillows, Ms. McMahon said she was struggling with some anxiety.“I was really nervous transitioning into coming home, feeling like this was a safe environment, but looking around feeling like it was a different place again,” said Ms. McMahon, who has an appointment to see a mental health counselor on Friday.

Her father, John McMahon, said it would take her about a year to recover fully. Ms. McMahon, who was hospitalized for a week, was not buying it. It’s not going to be a big deal,” she said. “It’s not. I’m going to be fine.”

Ms. McMahon had run to Boston Medical Center after the bombings, and was one of the first patients to arrive there.“I just saw everyone coming in, and that was really hard,” she said, adding that the sight of other patients arriving covered with blood and without limbs has been much more difficult to process than her own injuries. “Every once in a while, I just kind of break down and think about the whole big picture of it, just focusing on other people.”

Let these victims be symbolic of all innocent victims past, present and future that have been murdered, maimed, destroyed. The images of the pictures are burnt into every victims family of any tragedy, because they all involve the unimaginable, the unforgettable, and the unreal. It is real to those of us who have lost loved ones through the acts of others who have no value for human life.

On Monday, Kenneth Feinberg (who previously administered the 9/11 disaster fund), the administrator appointed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to run the One Fund, presented the first outline of how money will be distributed.

Based on Feinberg’s description, the families of the four people killed in the attack and its aftermath will be in line to receive the highest amounts, along with “individuals who suffered double amputations or permanent brain damage,” according to the Associated Press.

The next level of recipients will include those who lost a single limb. After that, funds will be distributed to people who required overnight hospitalization. Feinberg said that there were other groups who may be eligible for relief, pending further review, including those injured who did not require hospitalization, people who suffered psychological trauma, and business owners who were forced to remain closed during the investigation.

Victims will have until June 15th to submit claims, and Feinberg said that the One Fund planned to distribute money by the end of June.

Anyone who wants to donate money to help pay the medical costs for the victims or victims families who want to register to be part of the distribution of these funds should CLICK HERE.