natasha richardson

: (

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/17/natasha-richardson-brain_n_175764.html

i know :(

yeah, sux

heard about this this morning in the shower but didn't catch the name so up until I got to CNN.com I thought it was Bill Richardson

miserable week thus far imo

awful. poor liam neeson.

venessa redgrave's daughter?! didnt know that.

Nell is one of my favorite awful movies, rip.

this is messed.

RIP

why do people ski, again?

Don't think I've seen her in anything since Patty Hearst.

cuz its fun!

it's actually amazingly fun and exhilarating. like anything, people occasionally get injured doing it.

Skiing is fantastic but, yeah, I guess I don't know why everyone doesn't wear helmets while doing it now.

Sonny Bono died in vain.

I like her, but has she ever been in a good movie (haven't seen her stage work).

Skiing is fantastic but, yeah, I guess I don't know why everyone doesn't wear helmets while doing it now.

― Nurse Detrius (Eric H.), Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

same reason people don't wear helmets driving i guess?

Gothic supposed to be fantastic, but I haven't seen it.

Being in bad movies (or Congress) impairs your judgment.

comfort of strangers?

so bizarre, I only found this out because I was researching the movie Chloe, which is being filmed near my street - was talking to a production guy last night - which is what brought Liam & Natasha to Canada

Ok, this is kind of creepy:

Richardson fell on a beginners' trail Monday during a lesson at Station Mont Tremblant, said the statement from the resort, located about 80 miles northwest of Montreal.

At the time, Richardson was accompanied by a ski instructor, who called the ski patrol, the statement said. "She did not show any visible sign of injury, but the ski patrol followed strict procedures and brought her back to the bottom of the slope and insisted she should see a doctor."

Richardson, accompanied by the instructor, returned to her hotel, but about an hour after the fall was "not feeling good," the statement said. An ambulance was called, and Richardson was taken to a local hospital before she was transferred to Hopital du Sacre-Coeur.
CNN

A lot of serious head injuries start with what seems like an innocuous knock to the head, it's the swelling and bruising which develops as a result which can cause brain injury.

assassins des fauteuils rollents

What Ailsa said: perhaps there was an aneurysm problem there waiting to happen.

Terrible news. RIP.

so there's actually no official confirmation that she is brain dead, correct

depends on what you mean by official. there's no public statement from the family, no.

nothing from hospital spokespeople, either, I believe

Latest wire copy:

MONTREAL (AP) -- Britain's Press Association news agency quotes Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal as saying actress Natasha Richardson, critically injured in a skiing accident, is on a flight to the United States.
Richardson was hospitalized after falling during a private lesson on a beginners trail at the famed Mont Tremblant ski resort Monday.
IrishCentral.com reported that the Tony Award-winning actress and wife of Liam Neeson suffered a head injury.
Richardson, 45, is the elder daughter of Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave and the late director Tony Richardson, and belongs to a British acting dynasty.

Answer to Alfred's question: I thought The Handmaid's Tale was good when it came out, but it's been a while.

now i definitely don't wanna try skiing again

(I did mean a definitive statement from the family or the hospital as opposed to a "sources close to" statement, which I view as unsubstantiated rumor.)

cheap LOLz, but "Mont Tremblant" = "Mount Shakey"

Mount Mo Collier

Richardson fell on a beginners' trail Monday during a lesson at Station Mont Tremblant, said the statement from the resort, located about 80 miles northwest of Montreal.

At the time, Richardson was accompanied by a ski instructor, who called the ski patrol, the statement said. "She did not show any visible sign of injury, but the ski patrol followed strict procedures and brought her back to the bottom of the slope and insisted she should see a doctor."

Richardson, accompanied by the instructor, returned to her hotel, but about an hour after the fall was "not feeling good," the statement said. An ambulance was called, and Richardson was taken to a local hospital before she was transferred to Hopital du Sacre-Coeur.

Reminds me of Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing."

i learned to ski there. it's a beautiful place, but it is sooo icy. when i finally skied out west i was much better than i thought, because there was actually snow. i must have fallen at least two dozen times the first time i took a tremblant blue trail, though. sad.

Shakey Mo can't even catch a break on a tragedy thread he doesn't post on!

same reason people don't wear helmets driving i guess?

― s1ocki, Tuesday, March 17, 2009 2:02 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

slocki i <3 you but this is retarded

a couple of places are reporting that she has died : /

but that's been true for hours ... NYT says she was flown to NY.

i would like to be flown to ny when i die

r.i.p. natasha if you are dead, if not, hope you recover

coworker said perez hilton said she was dead this afternoon, but every other report seemed to say 'not dead'

ok coworker wrong -- perez is reporting the "all who say she dead are whores" angle. but yeah dudes :\ i have on good sources :\ is a well maybe this will work out but most likely no.

full disclosure: i work for the periodical that broke the "natasha richardson is brain dead" story. we've been getting bomb threats all day, and our publicist/writer who broke story have been getting death threats, over this :\

who knew she had such bomby fans?? in all seriousness -- i lived around the corner from her and her hubby for many years, and worked for the real estate company that owns their building. i've documented my many phone calls with the hubby on this board, HE IS HILARUOUS, and this story geniunely breaks my heart. i didn't really know these ppl but spoke to them from time to time and ALWAYS saw them in the locals i frequented. she seemed like a delightful person beyond being a good theatrical actress. i hope the stories i have heard are terribly, terribly wrong and she'll be holding "dewey defeats truman" style print-outs from my periodical weeks from now because she always seemed so delightful and nice. really genuinely nice and beautiful and friendly and willing to put up with her hubby at all times.

i am really jealous that you get to say 'my periodical'

schef, do you work for time out ny? one of my best friends just moved out to nyc to work there...

willing to put up with her hubby at all times.

do tell.

but who cares, this is just so infinitely sad. i was reminded of my friend, a very good skier, who goes on and on about the safety procedures you have to follow and how so many people (esp beginners) just neglect this. :-((((

Schrader's PATTY HEARST is a pretty gd movie, and NR is excellent in it

This is awful, let's hope she can recover, but it doesn't sound good. What Ailsa said about intracrainial bleeding is correct - even a relatively innocuous bang can be serious. A few years ago in a rugby match that I played in, a bloke on the opposition was injured in a clash of heads. He was helped off, but never lost consciousness and seemed absolutely fine afterwards. Apparently later on the evening, he had some kind of seizure, passed out and was rushed to hospital with a massive brain haemorrhage. Fortunately they managed to get to him in time, and apparently there was little permanent damage.

Rik Mayall had a similar kind of injury a few years ago IIRC, after falling off a quad bike./

RIP unfortunately
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7949195.stm

aw jeez : (

RIP, and I'll never ever get anywhere near a pair of skis.

Damn. Sad.

stevie, yes. what is yr friend's name?

this is tremendously sad. rip.

rip

http://content9.flixster.com/photo/32/27/41/3227415_tml.jpg

rip, she was so very lovely.

:-\

This is really awful and sad. :-(

I had almost completely forgotten I had one of her earliest television appearances around via the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, "The Copper Beeches" episodes with Joss Ackland. A basic enough role as an innocent governess working at a strange country house, but she carried it off well with a little high-strung, unsure edge -- and she looked great.

All very sad, this. RIP.

rip, she was so very lovely.

Yeah, this, and the randomness of her death.

velego

Didn't realise she was so young. Patty Hearst has been a favourite movie for a long time.

RIP

Y'know, this could have been avoided had she worn a helmet and/or gone to the hospital immediately after the accident. That's teh worst I think: the fact it could have been avoided. So sad. :-(

Last night on C4 news they reported that the people from the resort who brought Richardson back to her room made her sign some release form saying she required no further medical attention. :/

srsly no one wears a helmet when skiing, except the little 3 yr old star-shaped kids that fly down the mountain without ever turning. this was a freak accident and i don't think anyone involved needs to second-guess themselves. the chances of this happening on the bunny slope are so so small.

rip

ok xpost maybe those people wtf

i'm putting it down to freak accident. i fell over on the slopes once, got concussion and slight temporary memory loss, the doc said a helmet wouldn't have made a difference. rip.

helmet usage is actually quite common now, at least in the west. here in colorado the vast majority of people wear them. unfortunately for NR it seems to be mostly tourists/beginners who go without.

ledge that is some wtf doc opinion, nearly every medical professional you could talk to would recommend a helmet for any activity where you travel at high speeds over hard surfaces, and that they clearly do a lot to help prevent concussions and other impact-related head injuries. don't know the particulars of your situation though obv.

We went snowboarding about three years ago, just a couple of days in the Alps sleeping on friend's cabin sofa, and we had like 1 session with hired snowboards (the rest of the time we ate pastries, drank wine, and walked around in the snow). No one in the hire place suggested we should get helmets and it never occurred to us to ask. At one time with the snowboard I fell over and some kid nearly crashed into the back of my head cos he was going too fats on his skis (we weren't on piste, just on a hill behind where we were staying). I thought about a helmet then; I could have been quite nastily injured had things happened ever so slightly differently.

This is very sad. RIP.

Apparently this is called the "talk and die" syndrome, the person doesn't feel that bad, thinks nothing's wrong and then "bam" the headache starts and the brain swells. They sent the first ambulance away cause she felt alright. :-(((((((

nearly every medical professional you could talk to would recommend a helmet for any activity where you travel at high speeds over hard surfaces

well it was a french doc so there was probably some gallic laissez faire attitude going on. but ftw the evidence for the efficacy of bicycle helmets is muddled and contradictory.

Whoever said upthread that this is like the Carver story "A Small, Good Thing" = sadly OTM.

Not clear who sent the ambulance crew away. xppost "made her sign a release form saying she required no further attention"--?

helmet usage is actually quite common now, at least in the west.

def a good thing. tremblant can get pretty dicey at times, and i don't remember ever seeing any helmets save the starfish children and xxtreme halfpipey people.

She said she felt alright. The doctor should have ignored her and test her anyway.

"save" prob bad choice of words there..."except"
xp to self

signing a release form when you're released from a ski area's medical care facility is totally standard. i've done it. this will hopefully encourage an expansion of observation & treatment options for on-site medical care when dealing with head injuries, but i haven't read anything so far that implies the resort's response was particularly negligent.

litigation and insurance issues at american ski resorts have been really fucked up for 20 years now and are a big part of the reason it costs $80-100 for a daily lift ticket at resorts that are 1/8 the size of chamonix.

i kinda realized that after i wtf'd it

yeah release forms are standard but it was just weird because only C4 mentioned this detail! is all.

Yeah. And I know it's standard, and prob sent away at her behest, but still what Stevie said, about further medical examination should have been insisted on by somebody (what kind of exam did she actually get, anyway?)

I don't know that a lot of second-guessing is needed about helmets and ambulances. Knocks to the head are odd and unpredictable. I know multiple people with relatives who have wound up permanently and seriously damaged by routine knocks -- things like slipping on a patch of ice and falling down. I'm guessing every one of us would (and have!) done about the same thing: I'm fine, I'm fine. Because you usually are. It's a good argument for wearing a helmet, sure, even on a bunny slope -- but it's an equally good argument for wearing a helmet when you go ice skating. We don't always do it, and sometimes something awful happens.

It's got to be a terribly hurtful way to lose a wife or a mother -- some routine spill, the kind of accident that people are constantly walking away from.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=7116273

"Natasha Richardson fell in a beginners trail while taking a ski lesson at Station Mont Tremblant," the statement said. "She was accompanied by an experienced ski instructor who immediately called the ski patrol. She did not show any visible sign of injury but the ski patrol followed strict procedures and brought her back to the bottom of the slope and insisted she should see a doctor.

"As an additional precautionary measure, the ski instructor as well as the ski patrol accompanied Mrs. Richardson to her hotel," the statement continued. "They again recommended she should be seen by a doctor. The ski instructor stayed with her at her hotel. Approximately an hour after the incident Mrs. Richardson was not feeling good. An ambulance was called and Mrs. Richardson was brought to the Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in Ste-Agathe and was later transferred to Hôpital du Sacre-Coeur."

i don't want to make a big issue out of this cause all i've read is the same (probably unreliable) reports that you all have, but my impression as a long-time skier/snowboarder is that if anything the ski patrol/medical staff were if anything MORE concerned/solicitious/insistent than normal, probably because of richardson's celebrity status. head trauma is notoriously difficult (and expensive) to diagnose, and much more dependent upon the patient's cooperation and subjective responses than other forms of physical trauma. it does surprise me a little though that given their resources her family didn't insist on immediate further care.

that's not surprising at all. if you were with a family member who just bonked their head a bit and was insisting they were just fine, would YOU insist on taking them to the ER?

i don't understand any of the surprise here or the "could this have been prevented?" line of questioning here to be honest. she showed no signs of injury after a very routine kind of tumble doing an every day thing that many, many people do safely all of the time, and in a freak incident ended up dead due to an injury that would've been very difficult for a doctor to have spotted before she slipped into a coma anyway. i know it is scary to think that a random, routine knock to the head could very well just KILL you like that but we all would've behaved the same way in the situation, and would've waited until we were quite sick to get medical attention.

i know that isn't a very helpful thing but sometimes people just die and there isn't a thing you could do about it and there's not much to really learn from it either. you might as well start wearing a helmet during every activity you ever do, go to the doctor every time you sneeze funny, etc. the only lesson to take from this is that if you hit your head you should get attention right away instead of waiting til you feel bad -- but even then, it isn't as if your ER is going to take you and mri your head straight away because you smacked yourself with a cabinet door. it is what it is \O_o/

for the record i'm a pt/lmt who works mainly with trauma victims, and also has a family member whose life was changed irrevocably by a moderate concussion several years ago, so my immediate reaction would be to exhaust every diagnostical resource available. i agree with the spirit of your post though, schef.

I had assumed she'd 'hit something' til I read otherwise. Am rethinking my occasional sparring w/out boxing headgear. :(

Always was curious to hear her rendition of "Cabaret," but not now...

ok bill u box

xpost heard an excerpt on the radio this morning. powerful stuff.

ally otm with this:

that's not surprising at all. if you were with a family member who just bonked their head a bit and was insisting they were just fine, would YOU insist on taking them to the ER?

as terribly sad as this is, it's a freak thing and anyone who responds to it by retrospectively viewing that that time they walked into a door as a "near-death experience", or who starts going to A+E every time an apple falls on their head, is an idiot.

lovely lovely actress. RIP.

think abt where we would be if newton had gone to the barber (doctor) when an apple falls on his head~~no where thats where

but he would be alive today...

This might be made up:
http://www.countervalue.com/2009/03/19/the-sun-grabs-natasha-richardson-as-a-sponsored-link/

http://www.countervalue.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/picture-1.png

I cannot believe I just got an E! News Update saying that an autopsy of Richardson is under way. I mean, come the fuck on. Leave the poor family alone.

Frankly, I don't know how my email address ever got on the E! News list.

Some breaking news about the autopsy now

i know this issue is probably exhausted, but: as a former ski patroller (in MT), it's very, very routine to have ppl sign waivers when being released from care. if i did ANYTHING to initiate care, then i'm legally bound to continue it until my patient has either been transferred to another equally or more well trained professional, or until they have voluntarily opted out. if they say I'm Fine, there's nothing you can do except lay out all the possible risks, cross your fingers, and write up a report that says patient opted out of care AMA (against medical advice). the only thing that strikes me as *pssibly* fishy is that they didn't backboard her. our policy was that if someone bashed their head (and we didn't see it), then we assumed that the mechanism of injury might have allowed for spinal damage. that means they go on a backboard (which sucks), and can't get off it until "cleared" by an MD. it's *possible* that her celebrity status might have deterred them from doing this (again, once you're on a backboard you're not liable to get off of it for a couple hours), but i think most patrollers would find that suggestion offensive. what's more likely is that the fall itself really wasn't "serious," and that the neuro exam in the field didn't turn up anything, so off she went.

also, w/r/t helmets: helmets are really, really, really common, and highly recommended. but yeah, the people that wear them the least are your ski-once-a-year tourists. locals and more dedicated couple-times-a-year tourists have been wearing them for years. i got one for non-racing use....ten years ago?

anyway, rip

you sound very knowledgeable and skilled about this stuff, but inevitable I come to the end of the post and wind up imagining you farting on people with spinal injuries

maybe i do ;)

I basically agree with schef and others about the fluky nature of life and death. Yes, sometimes people die and there is nothing that could have been done differently to prevent the tragedy and no lessons to be learned. But... as more facts emerge, there is some indication that things could have gone differently at various points along the way. The abundance of caution and concern suggest, to me at least, that everything was not okay. Reports keep downplaying the severity of the fall, and anyone whose been skiing knows that people fall on their faces all the time. Something must have tipped the instructor and ski patrol off that she was not right.

Then, the hospital she was first taken to was not a trauma center and did not have the diagnostic tools needed to properly treat her (according to the NYT). She had to be transferred to a larger hospital and at least several hours passed during this time. This speaks to the gap in care between rural and urban health care more than anything else. Had this happened in Montreal, maybe she would still be alive today. Again, fluky and perhaps not worth considering. Things like this remind me how fragile this whole life thing really is.

anyway, RIP.