John

If shooters with access to extraordinary amounts of range time and training are often required to use more than 10 rounds to stop a threat, how can we expect the average person to do the same with less? Sen. Holstrom is nailing it.

🚨 Public service announcement: when your family is hospitalized BE THERE 🚨 Your grandmother wakes up in a strange room surrounded by strangers. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know why she is there. Nothing in the room looks familiar. The lights are brighter than home. Machines are beeping. People in scrubs move in and out of the room. She asks where she is. She asks where her family is. She tries to get out of bed. To the hospital staff, this often looks like agitation. Clinically, this moment has a name. Acute hospital delirium often begins when a patient wakes up and does not recognize where they are. Most people have felt a small version of this. You wake up in a hotel room, a friend’s house, or a relative’s spare bedroom. For a few seconds your brain cannot place the room. The ceiling is wrong. The furniture is unfamiliar. Then your brain catches up and the confusion fades. For many elderly patients with cognitive impairment admitted to the hospital, that confusion does not fade. They wake up in a place that makes no sense. Their glasses may be missing. Their hearing aids may be gone. Every person around them is a stranger. They try to stand. They try to leave. They call for family. To an overwhelmed hospital unit, this behavior becomes a problem to manage. The fastest way hospitals often manage it is medication. Haloperidol. Quetiapine. Lorazepam. Midazolam. Sometimes opioids layered on top. These are called chemical restraints. Instead of fixing the confusion, the patient is sedated until they are quiet and compliant. Family presence changes this. A familiar voice can orient them. A familiar face can calm them. Someone can remind them where they are. If you care about your elderly family members, show up when they are in the hospital. Because when family is present, patients are supported. When family is absent, the system often defaults to sedation.