still not sure how he knows how long. Even if he knew when she got up and when he realized she hadn't returned, that wouldn't tell him when she collapsed. Could have been minutes before he found her. Wonder why he thinks he knows how long.
I think your questions may be blending two different things.
It would be possible for Marlise not to have been found on the kitchen floor for an hour after having left the bed to make the bottle. It is also possible that EM may have felt that it was an hour rather than having objective proof of the real time that had elapsed rather than the real time that had elapsed. So, it is possible that he could have been mistaken in the real length of time that occurred.
However, EM's perception of how much time elapsed between Marlise hearing the baby and getting up to make the bottle and when he found her lying unconscious in the kitchen does not equal the number of nanoseconds, seconds, and minutes that Marlise had actually stopped breathing. The time that elapsed between Marlise's last full breath and the time that EM discovered her is unknown because no one was with Marlise when she suffered the suspected embolism and collapsed. EM did not see the onset of the event, nor did he see when she stopped breathing. He got to her after she had stopped breathing, so EM's experience is of the longer time of her absence rather than the shorter time of her medical emergency.
The estimate of an hour, IMO, simply provides an outer framework of time within which the event of the suspected embolism and subsequent breathing problems happened. My guess is that, although she was found alive, Marlise could have stopped breathing several minutes before EM found her and began performing CPR. After one minute without oxygen, brain cells die but survival is possible. After three minutes without oxygen, serious brain damage is likely. After ten minutes without oxygen, many brain cells are dead, survival less likely. After fifteen minutes, survival unlikely. (
http://www.transweb.org/faq/q3.shtml) IIRC, the fetus would survive on the oxygen still available from the placenta although that supply would have been seriously depleted by Marlise's own oxygen deprivation.
Furthermore, I don't think that EM's estimate of the length of the time frame had much importance to the people treating Marlise other than as an approximation of time during which she had been affected. It would be illogical in the extreme, IMO, to ask a stressed husband for this kind of information and expect an accurate answer, even if he was an experienced EMT.
JMO, but I think all the medical professionals involved in treating Marlise would have made their own assessments as to her physical status according to set protocols before coming to any conclusions. I believe that from those conclusions they would have determined her status and subsequent treatments. My guess is that in the circumstances, the timeline that EM gave them had only a cursory influence on the treatments given to Marlise, if that.
Could the many experienced medical practitioners, current and retired, correct any mistakes I've made with this theory?
