I'm not sure that frostbite requires your flesh to actually freeze, rather it is just the condition when your body devises to reduce blood flow to an extremity causing dry gangrene.

Certainly, when frostbite occurs quickly it is usually due to extreme cold and does include some freezing of tissue. But I don't think it is a stretch to term any gangrene casued by cold as "frostbite", because the key to the condition is that the body stops supplying blood in response to the cold -- once that happens is moot whether the damage is caused by actual freezing or prolonged lack of blood.

I guess I may need to replace my sense of humor.

Blue gel packs are not, to me, ice packs, because solid blue gel is not ice, even though it may contain ice crystals.

When I began working in hospital settings, electrocardiograph machines still came with two-conductor power cords and a neon light and an exposed metal ring a nurse or technician could touch with a finger to decide which way to insert the plug in a wall receptacle to minimize electrically "burning" patients. From time to time, the use of such ECG (or EKG) machines resulted in an electrocuted patient.

Now, I doubt that any such ECG machine is in use in any U.S. Hospital.

Sometimes, a terrible outcome of a mistake alerts people about something that is really stupid.

I do have one of the plastic bags that contains a freezable gel. It states on it, "Freeze and use as an ice pack." It does not say that it is an ice pack, only that it can be used as one.

However, the gel is not blue, it is essentially colorless.

And, in large print, it states, "DO NOT USE ON BODY PARTS"

And "frost" is not the same as a lack of adequate capillary blood flow.

Perhaps I do not correctly understand the word, "Frost." Let me dig out a dictionary.

I found the definition, and confess my blunder:

Frost, Robert L., born 1874, died 1963, was an American poet who commonly placed his poetic works, geographically, in some of the New England state's rural areas.

Were his poems so biting as to produce Frost bite?

Hospital blunders can be terrible.

A minor operation on a child, a blunder, a dead child, and parents screaming in anguished grief.

That seems to easily drill down to the very bottom of one's soul.

An additional thing to consider here is the accuracy of reporting. Reporters generally know more about interviewing and writing than they do about thermodynamics and physiology, and all too often they feel the need to explain things they don't really understand to their presumably dumber readers. The result is that they frequently make errors. I could easily believe that a reporter might have called a bag of gel an ice pack and/or reported the results of applying the "ice pack" (whatever it was) to the man's penis "frostbite", to make things simple for the reader even if the source he got his information from used different terminology. Even if he was quoting from the court documents, lawyers generally know more about the laws of the land than about laws of nature.

This is not to argue whether the article is accurate or whether the lawsuit has merit. I'm just cautioning about getting too carried away with semantics in analyzing a news article.

Sandi

janekane (imported) wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2012 12:12 pm I guess I may need to replace my sense of humor.

Blue gel packs are not, to me, ice packs, because solid blue gel is not ice, even though it may contain ice crystals.

Sometimes, a terrible outcome of a mistake alerts people about something that is really stupid.

And "frost" is not the same as a lack of adequate capillary blood flow.

Perhaps I do not correctly understand the word, "Frost." Let me dig out a dictionary.

Most people don't use words that literally, or care about such a high level of literal word use. If someone has a frozen liquid most people would consider it "ice" and if you said your toes dropped off from being overly chilled most people would call it "frost bite".

Or to put it another way, what would you actually call it? There is no need to be exact when everyone understands what is being said with simpler, well-known words.

Sorry to jump on this, but I find that "grammar nazis" and "spelling nazis" are really a useless point of view -- a dictionary is always behind the time and are just an abstract idealism of language. Reality and real language are way more varied and organic, and frankly that's life. I really can't imagine how horrible it must be to have this bother you, as life is full of these imperfections.