
What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane? - JacobAldridge
http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airplane.html
======
omegant
I have had several medical emergencies onboard as a pilot. One thing I
constantly say to physician friends (my wife is a doctor), is that we (the
crew) expect from them to make as fast assessment of the situation as
possible.

For example in my company we don´t have an online doctor to ask for help, so
the volunteer has to take care of the situation. Recognizing the problem as
soon as possible and prescribing the necessary action (Is not going to be easy
with such limited capabilities, sometimes is just impossible, but is better an
overreaction), is important because commercial planes fly at 8 NM/minute, and
depending where are you flying ( flying over the ocean or africa) 10 minute
delays could mean another 30 extra min to land or even several hours if you
have passed a no return point in the middle of the ocean.

Don´t hesitate to take control of the situation regarding the patient,
stewardesses and other passengers:

\- Ask for the medikit (only physicians are allowed to use it). I have seen
some chief stewardess resisting to bring it, just to avoid having to write the
compulsory report. \- If it is necessary to lay the passenger on the ground or
other seats, bring him water or any other thing, just give the needed orders
and ask for help. \- Ask the stewardesses to keep other passengers away if
they are interfering too much. \- As soon as practicable give a report to the
captain and if necessary ask him to land the plane. He will be waiting for it.
\- If possible never declare a decease onboard , first you could be wrong!,
and it is a bureaucratic mess. Is better to keep trying CPR till the emergency
team can take care of the patient. We apply this in Europe although it is not
a written rule, I don´t know how it works in USA. -Remember when in doubt it
is better to ask the captain to land. Everybody will lose an hour or two but a
live will probably be saved.

~~~
maaku
I know I'm going to get down-voted for an information-free post, but I think
it's awesome that you're a commercial pilot and participating in HN. It can
sometimes get too insular with valley-type techies here. Thanks for
participating.

~~~
michaelhoffman
Not for being "information-free" but for breaking the guidelines: "Please
don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."

~~~
bostonpete
I don't think he was baiting users so much as apologizing in advance.

------
ilamont
If you are interested in medical "hacks" on long-distance flights, the award
has to go to two doctors who were on a 1995 British Airways flight from Hong
Kong to London when a patient had trouble breathing. They determined that the
patient suffered a collapsed lung, so they made an incision in her chest, and
used a coat hanger, brandy, and a tube from a medical kit to drain the lung.
As I recall the story, there was also a nurse who assisted but I can only find
the AP story which references the two doctors.(1)

I also have a relative who is a doctor/med school professor who does a lot of
traveling, and has had to assist the crew three times with in-flight
emergencies. One was a heart attack, one was deteriorating condition of an
unknown cause (the flight was diverted to evacuate this man) and the third was
a guy who had intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be the
result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the flight and being unable
to urinate.

1\.
[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZBxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZBxOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pOwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3211,3732374&dq=hong+kong+doctor+flight+collapsed+lung&hl=en)

~~~
citricsquid

        intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be
        the result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the 
        flight and being unable to urinate
    

was that due to the altitude or something else?

~~~
ilamont
The stricken passenger had the option of using the restroom, but for unknown
reasons could not urinate. They stretched him out on a row of seats which
seemed to help the pain, but from what I recall was unable to go until they
reached the destination airport. The total trip time was about three hours.

~~~
niels_olson
Beyond a certain capacity the bladder is no longer contractile and must be
catheterized to urinate. Happens every day in the OR or PACU.

~~~
maaku
Really? What happened before modern medicine? I'm not being snarky: I believe
you.. but a burst bladder would be lethal without access to modern medical
knowledge. That seems like a epic fail by evolution.

~~~
niels_olson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death>

~~~
bosch
Now I have something to be paranoid about and will be going the bathroom as
much as possible.

~~~
niels_olson
Alcohol is a double-whammy because it induces a degree of transient paresis,
allowing the inebriated to hold it longer than they should. Just don't fight
the urge and you'll be fine.

------
kokey
I can't find it now, but my favourite 'doctor on a plane' story was from an
anesthesiologist who struggles to sleep on a plane, so on a long haul flight
took something to help him doze off. He woke up to the 'is there a doctor on
the plane?' call, and called the flight attendant over. It turned out that he
was the person that they wanted to attend to, they were concerned since he was
passed out and drooling on the passenger next to him.

------
Dove
My dad, an electrical engineer, was once on his way back from a conference
with a Concorde flight full of other EEs. In the air, the stewardess asked,
"Is there an engineer on board?" Everyone responded enthusiastically. She was
forced to clarify, "Is there an _aeronautical_ engineer on board," to
disappointment all around.

I must admit, some secret part of me always hopes I'll be in a situation on an
airplane where they need an emergency perl script written . . .

~~~
JshWright
That story seems _really_ fishy to me...

Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde? What good
would an aeronautical engineer be _in flight_?

~~~
lotharbot
(Disclaimer: I'm Dove's husband. The man in question is my father in law, and
I've heard the story from him firsthand, apparently much more recently than my
wife did.)

> _"Why would electrical engineers fly to a conference on a Concorde?"_

The airline was moving a Concorde to a different facility (ie, it wasn't part
of regular scheduled service). They decided to "upgrade" a bunch of passengers
who were scheduled to be on a different type of aircraft. They moved the whole
group of engineers together.

The stewardess asked for a "Concorde engineer", who was needed for after
landing. It had something to do with the way the Concorde hooks up to the
loading bridge at the terminal (it may have something to do with the unusual
height of Concorde?)

~~~
Dove
Ah. I guess it has been some years since I heard the story. Thanks for the
correction. :)

------
JshWright
The medical director of my paramedic program used to work for a hospital that
provided medical control for a number of major airlines (generally speaking,
even when they ask for a physician on a plane, they're also calling the
airline's 'on call' doctor as well).

His scariest stories weren't due to the criticality of the patient, but rather
the incompetence of the provider on board the plane (to the point that he, on
several different occasions, had to instruct the flight crew to 'please keep
him away from the patient for the rest of the flight'). Just because someone
is a 'doctor' doesn't necessarily mean they're well equipped to handle a
medical emergency (note: the physician interviewed here managed the patient
perfectly appropriately).

It's possible he was just pandering to the room of soon-to-be paramedics at
the time, but he said he generally instructed the flight crew to ask for a
paramedic before a physician, simply because they're generally more
comfortable working in the 'austere' medical setting found on a plane.

~~~
btilly
My wife told me about a famous dermatologist who flies in dread of getting
that call and there being no other doctor available. When med school was 40
years ago, you're not necessarily going to be comfortable handling, say, a
heart attack.

~~~
supwiggles
One of my paramedic instructors told me a pretty funny story.

Apparently they were on shift one Saturday afternoon, when a call came through
for a Code 2 (Cardiac Arrest) at a local racecourse.

Anyway, it was about 15 minutes away so they took off in a hurry, all the
while receiving notes on their terminal regarding the job. Apparently it went
along the lines of this:

Initial: Unknown Age, Cardiac Arrest, Racecourse etc Update: CPR in Progress
Update: Doctor has self accounced at scene. Update: Doctor has called patient
as deceased. CPR ceased.

It took another 5 minutes for the paramedics to get to the racecourse, and
they still unloaded their gear and made their way to the patient. When asking
for the doctor, they found that it was actually the racecourse veterinarian
who had made the call.

~~~
JshWright
I'm assuming the patient wasn't a racehorse?

If I had a dollar for every time a dermatologist or podiatrist tried to be
'helpful' on an emergency scene... I could probably buy a coffee at
Starbucks... The same goes for 'nurses.' If an ER nurse wants to help out,
that's great. Invariably though, it's a nurse at a nursing home or dialysis
center...

I don't mean to imply these folks aren't skilled professionals, but
prehospital medical emergencies are generally well outside their experience,
and the confusion that arises from that can be dangerous.

~~~
stephencanon
Unlike a podiatrist, a dermatologist went to medical school. If they're young,
there's actually a good chance that they were among the very best medical
students -- in the past few years, dermatology has become one of the more
competitive fields in medicine because of the lifestyle (short predictable
hours, high pay, minimal insurance hassles).

There are daft people in every field, but I would be _delighted_ to have most
of the derm residents and attendings I've met in an emergency (in fairness, I
should note that this is a small sample, drawn from a couple top-tier
hospitals, and biased towards people who do volunteer backcountry search and
rescue).

~~~
JshWright
Yeah, the podiatrist comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Like I said, I'm not try to discredit these folks as skilled (and in many
cases, extremely smart) individuals.

However, a couple weeks of a rotation through an ER during med school isn't
really going to prepare you well for prehospital emergencies (SAR, on the
other hand, can be great training for that). Making an assessment and clinical
decisions based on fairly limited information isn't something I've found most
physicians to be comfortable with, especially in an emergency setting.

My list of 'glad to see you' docs is pretty much: ER, OB, and Anesthesia.

------
stephencanon
My wife is a surgeon; while we were flying to Morocco last spring, a man on
the plane accidentally put himself into a diabetic coma. A nurse was sitting
next to him and thought that he was having a heart attack. The attendants
called for a doctor; my wife recognized the actual issue, and revived him by
rubbing honey on the inside of his mouth and gums (the onboard medical kit had
nothing of use beyond rubber gloves).

The other passengers on the flight actually did applaud her, which was cute,
but I think they mostly did it because it meant that the flight didn't need to
be diverted to Heathrow.

~~~
ibejoeb
Wow, shocking that the plane did not have glucose tablets. I carry the gel in
my luggage just in case since it's particularly common and so simple. I guess
sugar is sugar, but manipulating gooey honey sounds a lot harder that
squirting gel pack.

(Don't want to rant too much, but it irks me that TSA has, once or twice,
confronted me on the things.)

~~~
walshemj
yes back when I helped organize a medium sized (1200-11300) camping event we
always had plenty of sugar and mars bars to cater for diabetics that went out
of balance this is in addition to what the on site St Johns team had.

Only had one close shave where some one diabetic had become and unconscious
and thrown up in there sleeping bag - let me tell you seeing someone being
carried towards you on a stretcher certainly gets rid of the hangover quick -
this was pre mobile phones so i had to sprint to the public call box to call
999 (911)

------
miles_matthias
Okay, I'll share random doctor flight story - last week some family friends
were flying to Hawaii for vacation, and a man across the isle said he had been
on vacation for several weeks and didn't bring enough heart medicine. He said
he would just get some more when he got home, but halfway through the flight
he slumped down in his chair, unresponsive. There was a doctor on the flight
that used a stethoscope to find there was no heartbeat. (Not sure if the
doctor had his own stethoscope or if it was in an on board kit.) The doctor
just looked up at the flight attendant and shook his head. Luckily, this
flight was not to Hawaii. It was just a layover from Houston to LAX, so they
were able to land in Phoenix to have a medical response team take the
passenger off. Apparently when they took him off, they didn't use a board or
anything - one man grabbed his wrists, another his ankles, and they carried
him off, but they couldn't completely lift him so his butt was dragging on the
floor down the isle. I thought that was a little weird.

Also, is it legal to just put a blanket on the guy, pretend he's sleeping, and
then deal with it when you get to your destination? Our friends missed their
connecting flight to Hawaii in LAX because of this ordeal.

~~~
e40
It's a little surprising to me they didn't even attempt CPR.

~~~
niekmaas
Out of hospital CPR has very slim survival chances. Being on a plane will
result in at least 30 minutes of CPR even before an ambulance can take over.
Chances on surviving that are extremely low. Therefore I can see why the
doctor on the plane decided not to perform CPR. I have a medical degree myself
btw.

~~~
supwiggles
This +10. Out of the 11 out of hospital arrests that I went to as a Paramedic
(in a 6 month period), only 1 of them survived.

Ironically, the one who survived was a prisoner who had cut his own throat. He
had pretty much bled out by the time we got there, with a tiny little
junctional on the monitor. Today he has 0 deficits, and it is like the event
never occurred.

~~~
thematt
Maybe I'm missing something, but even if there's only a 10% chance of survival
I'd still want somebody to give it a shot. What is the downside -- somebody
has to do it for 30 minutes until the plane lands?

~~~
JshWright
That's 10% for someone who had access to advanced care within a few minutes.

If CPR goes on for more than 10 minutes or so in a non-hypothermic patient
(with no other interventions), your chances of survival are basically nil.
This is is especially true if you have a limited number of people doing
compressions. Effective compressions are extremely hard work, and rescuer
fatigue is a huge issue with CPR (we switch every two minutes no matter how
'fine' the person doing compressions claims to be). I doubt you could maintain
effective CPR on an aircraft for 30 minutes (I suppose you could get a couple
dozen people involved, but that seems unlikely).

If I'm not back in 15 minutes, please stop... At that point enough damage has
been done to my brain that I don't want to come back...

------
Hawkee
My wife was on a flight from Taipei to LAX when they called for a doctor. She
didn't see whether or not a doctor responded, but there were no further calls
or announcements after that. Later when she went to the bathroom she saw a
body bag on the floor near the bathrooms. When the flight arrived there were
police waiting. Nobody could leave the plane until they were done with the
body. No details were given to any of the passengers.

------
joezydeco
I'm curious if insulin is a standard part of the medkit. I was on a
transatlantic crossing once with a coworker who went into diabetic shock
(that's another long story).

A nurse was onboard the flight but no insulin. We had to divert and my
coworker was laid up in a Newfoundland hospital for 3 days.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Why would a diabetic person not travel with insulin?

~~~
joezydeco
Pretty much a collision of unfortunate events. We were at a work function
until 2am in London and returned to our room to find it had been robbed. The
thieves took his bag which contained his insulin kit.

So now it's 3am GMT and he can't reach his doctor in the States. We're
supposed to leave at 8am for the flight home. No pharmacy is open and even if
they were, they wouldn't help him. Nurses at Heathrow couldn't help him
either.

So he decided to risk it and see if he could make it all the way home without
having any trouble. He went into shock 4 hours into the flight.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Ouch.

Were I ever to become diabetic (and manage to figure out my fear of needles),
I'm pretty sure I'd carry around spare insulin, like an epi-pen.

(Is it something that can be carried around trivially? Or does it need to be
refridgerated? You know what, maybe I'll just eat healthier.)

~~~
mitchh
Insulin will last around 30 days unrefrigerated. Refrigerated, it lasts until
the expiration date, which is years for the insulin I have.

That said, insulin is used to treat hyperglycemia, which is usually not an
acute incident. "Diabetic shock" refers to hypoglycemia, in which the
individual needs sugar to raise their blood sugar to normal levels.

------
davidmr
This happened once to my father on a flight. He's an orthopedic surgeon (the
woman in this story really hit the jackpot with an a anesthesiologist--the
only thing better would be an ER doc, I think), and someone was having chest
pains. He determined very quickly that it was not a heart attack or other
critical condition, but through the whole ordeal, the passenger next to the
patient (who did not know the patient and had no medical training) kept second
guessing my dad's requests and diagnosis. The flight attendants ended up
"asking" this other guy to move several rows back to an empty seat.

Everyone's a critic.

------
herdrick
I'm a former ski patroller, which is a kind of outdoors EMT / paramedic. Once,
on a flight from Seattle to Boston (for a YC interview!) I walked to the aft
bathroom only to find a young woman who had collapsed there, still prone and
lethargic, with a stewardess standing over her with a look of annoyed disgust.
An evaluation indicated she was probably just dehydrated, so I had the still-
annoyed stewardess bring her water, which revived her. (Of course I
recommended that she see a doc when we landed just in case, but I doubt she
did.) After an hour or so we were able to get her back to her seat. The rest
of the flight was uneventful. The only thing that never added up was the
bizzare attitude of the stewardess.

(edited: semi-conscious -> lethargic)

~~~
JshWright
How did you get the water into someone who was semi-concious?

~~~
herdrick
Semi-conscious, if I recall correctly, covers a wide range of responsiveness.
She was unable to stand and slow to respond to questions but was well-oriented
w.r.t. person, place and time. Drinking water wasn't a problem. The possible
danger is that they'll vomit it up after passing out, or that they have some
issue that requires emergency surgery. Now you've put something in their
stomach that they might vomit during surgery, which is somewhat dangerous. But
she had signs of dehydration so I did it.

In retrospect I should have given her honey or the like just in case she was
having her first ever diabetic shock.

~~~
JshWright
No, the possible danger is that they'll aspirate the water and you'll
compromise their airway. Sounds like she wasn't semi-concious though, just
tired, and maybe a little lethargic.

~~~
herdrick
Of course, if they are that badly out of it - I decided she wasn't. It sounds
like I used the wrong term, thanks. Fixed.

------
umsm
I have one question regarding the question: "Did you end up getting sued?"

Why would the doctor get sued? Why would that question even be asked? I didn't
feel like any type of catastrophic event happened to merit a lawsuit.

~~~
lostlogin
You'd be surprised. A course was held recently on in air medicine here in NZ.
The airline running the course said that they would foot any resulting legal
bills that resulted, from anywhere on earth. However there was one condition -
medical staff called when on a plane will give their time for free. The
airline had received invoices for medical staff time in the recent past.

------
nvr219
I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

------
rangibaby
An interesting interview. I wonder if he gets upset if people call him
Shirley?

------
jeroen94704
I was flying transatlantic with a friend who has a medical degree when they
called for a doctor.

There was an older fellow who had a heart condition for which he was taking
medication. His reasoning had gone something like "I need to take one of these
pills four times a day, but I'll be traveling, so I'll just take all four of
them right before checking in". Needless to say, this didn't work very well,
and he was having sort of issue with his heart as a result. The poor guy was
so scared he literally shit himself.

My friend actually had to make the call whether we needed to land on an
airport in Greenland to get the guy to a hospital. He thought about it for a
minute and decided that the guy was going to live, so we continued to
Amsterdam, where an ambulance was waiting.

As a "thank you" from KLM, my friend was allowed in the cockpit during landing
(this was before 9/11), and he got a bag full of little bottles of alchoholic
beverages. Unfortunately, he's a teetotaller.

------
mahmud
Everytime I have seen a doctor call on airplane it was either an allergic
reaction to food, or some guy who opened his duty-free bottle on the plane and
had a little too much fun.

------
viame
Cool story.My girlfriend is a flight attendant. I hear a lot of stories from
her and it is very common to ask if there are any doctors on the plane. What
crazy is that people in-flight non stop (we just don't hear about it).
Anything from heart attacks to other health problems, even just because they
are old.

Sometimes they will put a blanket over the body, sometimes they will pretend
that the person is sleeping. Depending on the situation.

I don't really get into the details but that's the scoop.

=)

------
vacri
I used to work with a consultant paediatric neurologist who had the call go
out on a trans-pacific flight for a heart problem. She was hesitating before
responding because the last time she had anything to do with hearts or adults
was in medical school 20 years earlier, and was frantically running through
what she could remember of cardiac medicine. Just as she made up her mind to
respond she was beaten to the response... by a cardiologist.

------
_wesley_
This was a very interesting article, given that I just experienced something
similar.

Flight from SFO -> IAD last week. As soon as we took off, they asked for a
doctor. He spent 2 hours treating the patient before they started drink
service, and continued until we landed. We were all quite worried about the
person, but found out at the end of the flight that they had overdosed on
NyQuil. That made the whole ordeal fairly frustrating.

~~~
JshWright
Overdosed on NyQuil? How much NyQuil did he take?

I have no idea how big a typical bottle of NyQuil is, but assuming it's
somewhere in the ballpark of 10oz (we'll call it 300ml to make the math easy).
NyQuil has 325mg/15ml, so our hypothetical 10oz bottle has ~6,500mg in it.
That's certainly a respectable dose of Tylenol, but it's not likely to be
fatal in a couple hours for an average sized adult...

~~~
carbocation
I'd guess that the problem was excessive sedation due to the antihistamine,
rather than acute liver injury from acetaminophen toxicity.

------
donretag
"The medikit was actually really comprehensive ... that contained ... even
morphine."

I am surprised that it contained morphine. Pain killers would not help much in
resolving whatever medical issue is occurring.

Besides, is it not dangerous to report the fact that morphine is available on
a flight? Some medkits are easily accessible and can be taken when the flight
attendants are not looking.

~~~
moioci
When you have a myocardial infarction or acute pulmonary edema inflight,
you'll be glad there's morphine available.

~~~
supwiggles
It is amazing how well morphine can work, and how utterly useless it can be at
other times. I found it to be incredibly helpful during the AMI cases,
especially for putting the patient as ease, especially when they understand
the gravity of the STEMI that they are currently experiencing.

We went to a fractured tib/fib (Football injury) and we loaded him up with the
maximum dose over the course of treatment (50 minutes or so) and it didn't
even touch the sides.

Looking back we probably should have called for the IC guys and done some
ketamine + realignment.

------
lurkinggrue
Oh stewardess, I speak jive.

------
damian2000
Here's the google cache version (site is under heavy load) ...
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.coc...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.cockeyed.com/personal/doctor_airplane/doctor_airplane.html)

------
SeanA208
An uncle of mine was in a situation like this once. He was sitting in first
class and had to tend to someone in economy class. He decided that it would be
best that he stayed by the man he was tending to so my uncle swapped seats
with the man's wife. They gave him a bottle of wine for his help but I would
have expected something more.

~~~
ww520
What airline was that? They should have at least given him a round-trip ticket
since he missed a part of flight he paid for.

------
logjam
I was half-dozing on a Southwestern flight when a stewardess came on the PA
system calling for any physician to identify themselves.

I spoke up, and the crew directed me toward the back. They already had this
incredible medical kit opened in the aisle. I mean they had
_everything_....ACLS drugs, defibrillator, suction, a complete mini-pharmacy,
and what looked like a few plastic-7 wound and/or trauma kits at the least. I
mean, I was practically drooling over this high-tech kit.

Of course, it was also at that moment that I started frantically running
through cardiac code algorithms in my head, and pondering _exactly how long it
had been_ since I'd actually dealt with a code _in a hospital_ , with plenty
of trained staff, lab support, etc.

Of course, it wasn't any kind of life-and-death situation at all - a young
person very stressed and anxious about relocating and the actual conditions of
the flight, who'd been hyperventilating, hadn't eaten or had anything to drink
for many hours, near-syncopal, etc etc.

I tried my hardest, but couldn't think of a single thing to use out of the
medi-kit. I _wanted_ to use it.

I just sat down next to her and listened, which is 90% of medicine anyway.

Southwest was great - gave me two round-trip tickets to anywhere for taking a
few minutes to talk.

A colleague at University of Hawaii wrote a paper about dealing with
psychiatric emergencies in the air. One thing that stuck out in the paper was
the interesting phenomenon of what he called "honeymoon psychosis", with one
of a young newly married couple away from home for the first time, possibly on
their first flight, all leading to some interesting disturbances on those long
pan-Pacific flights.

~~~
walshemj
Would not they check the passenger list for Dr's first? I remember being told
that this was an occupational hazard for Phd's that you might be assumed to be
a MD Dr.

~~~
niels_olson
As a physician and government traveler, the online booking service never asks
for my title, and even if it did, I'd have to choose: Dr/MD? LCDR/USN/MC? Most
identities online don't require a title and I don't offer. It only induces
spam.

~~~
dcminter
Just as an entertaining aside - the British Airways registration page
currently includes Viscountess amongst other titles. Even so it's relatively
limited - in its early days it contained a bizarre list of titles including
the, um, uniquely prestigious "pope". Presumably the result of over-
enthusiastic data population of the DB from some authoritative resource.

------
melvinram
I'm confused. Why is this on HN?

~~~
daeken
To paraphrase the rules, if you see a submission that doesn't belong, just
flag it and move on. If enough people agree, it'll go away.

------
yycom
Unreadable on mobile (pre text or something preventing reflow). And no byline
or date, so completely useless. Fuck off basically.

~~~
aleyan
Outside of the parent's bad attitude, he does have a good point. No timestamp
on the article makes it hard for me to place the story in context.

It is one of my pet peeves when I come across some morsel of information
online but I can't evaluate if it is still applicable because there is no
timestamp anywhere.

~~~
cynwoody
That's a pet peeve of mine, also. There's usually a date, but often not near
the top and/or not in a standard format. Then there are these sites that use
relative times, e.g., 0 minutes ago, or 865 days ago ...

In the current case, there is a timestamp of sorts at the bottom of the page:
"Updated December 27, 2012 Copyright 2012 Cockeyed.com".

Here is blog owner's About page, last updated January 27, 2012:
<http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/about.html>.

~~~
cockerham
Is there some form of timestamp which is better than the full date at the
bottom of the page?

~~~
lostlogin
Personally I find it useful when it says it was an hour ago, or a day ago, or
3 days ago etc up to a week. Then the date is what I want.

~~~
cynwoody
Yes. And it also helps if it's near the top of the post, as opposed to being
buried in a signature or something.

Bottom of the page would be OK, too, if people always put it there. But they
don't.

Consistent date placement promotes efficient search engine result scanning
(Google's date constraints are highly imperfect).

