::: Feeding, however, is a whole other ballgame. As far as I know, IV
::: bags aren't marked: "1 liter is equivalent to a four-course dinner"
::: or anything else that would be at all helpful to an untrained
::: person.
:: They're marked with the concentration, it's not hard to work from
:: that to calories or some other number you're comfortable with.
: Wildepad <noreplies>
: Knowing that there's 20 ml. of glucose in an IV bag isn't a lot of
: help unless you also know how many calories there are in each ml. Got
: any diet books handy? I doubt there are many in the typical hospital,
: at least not recognizable as such to an untrained person.
Eh, rummage around a bit and you could doubtlessly find pamphlets and
such. Hospitals have these to give out for dietary advice. I don't
know what propportion of folks have a rough notion, but I just know
off the top of my head that three thousand calories is a pound of fat,
and something like half that for a pound of sugar. (Checking, I find
that's actually a bit off (presumably because the "a pound of fat" I'm
thinking of is really only a pound of mostly-fat), but not off enough
to matter much.) A few unit conversions, and something could be had.
As mentioned elsethread, you could be off by quite a bit and still be
getting significant benefit.
It would not be implausible to have J-Random-Person either know that
much, know quite a bit more, or know quite a bit less, whatever's
convenient for the story. I imagine a bigger hurdle would be IVs,
getting the drip titrated, catheterization, that sort of thing, if it
hadn't been done already. Intubation if you're going for feeding by
stomach isn't easy, either. A bit of arithmetic and/or research and/or
vague memories of diet and/or exercise books is easy in comparison.
(Of course, you can easily do without catheterization, but whatever.)
Wayne Throop throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sheol.org/throopw
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