Carrie Fisher suffered a massive heart attack aboard an airplane about 15 minutes before it was due to land in Los Angeles this afternoon.
According to TMZ:
Our sources say Carrie was on a flight from London to LAX when she went into cardiac arrest. People on board were administering CPR.
We’re told the emergency occurred 15 minutes before the plane landed in L.A. A flight attendant asked if there were any medical personnel on board and an EMT who was sitting in the back of the plane came up to first class and administered life-saving measures.
The plane landed just after noon in L.A. and paramedics rushed her to a nearby hospital.
The LA Times latest Twitter update says she’s in critical condition –
Actress Carrie Fisher is in critical condition after a cardiac episode during a flight to LAX https://t.co/d5X4R5q5xB
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 23, 2016
Update: The Associated Press is now reporting —
Carrie Fisher is in stable condition after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight Friday.
Her brother, Todd Fisher, told The Associated Press that she was “out of emergency” and stabilized at a Los Angeles hospital Friday afternoon. He said he could not discuss any other details about what happened.
Update: According to Variety, her brother Todd Fisher has contradicted the Associated Press report quoted earlier —
“She’s in the ICU and everybody’s praying for her,” he told Variety in a phone interview. “There’s nothing new from the doctors. There’s nothing new at all. … There’s no good news or bad news.”
Todd Fisher said media outlets are “writing between the lines” in reporting that she’s now in stable condition. The Associated Press reported earlier today that Todd Fisher said Carrie Fisher was in stable condition and “out of emergency.”
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And we still have 8 days left.
Please, send the giant meteor.
Ugh! I hope she pulls through.
(Sorry, used wrong email address — please delete other post..)
Latest report is that she’s on a ventilator.
Keeping her in my thoughts. Fuck 2016.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but the way I heard CBS just quote the paramedics about their treatment (I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but it was something about “aggressive treatment”) it’s sounding like “dead but we aren’t ready to say it yet.”
As if 2016 wasn’t bad enough already.
Hope she makes it.
Look, this is gonna sound weird but…I’m pretty young, not forty yet. Is this just how it is forever after a certain age? All your cultural touchstones dying one after another? I can’t tell any more if this year is just completely over the top or if this is just what eventually happens because the people who make the stuff you like are usually older than you.
Not asking anyone to out themselves as an old fogey but…is this normal?
Not asking anyone to out themselves as an old fogey but…is this normal?
Not to me. It’s one of Those Years where everything seems to go wrong.
Dammit. Please get better, Carrie. This year has been way too rough already.
Update: The Associated Press is now reporting —
My first thought was, oh no, not Carrie too. But the latest updates suggest that she’s not dead, so here’s hoping she makes a good recovery.
@RedWombat,
Not an Old Fogey (or at least I don’t think I am) but am over 40, and it is a bit like that. It’s the inevitable byproduct of demographics & a finite human lifespan I’m afraid, though 2016 has been especially notable in the number of icons dying.
I’m 46, and I can’t recall a year quite as dismaying as this one.
I swear to God, 2016…I WILL cut you. #GetBetterCarrie 🙁 🙁
@RedWombat: the BBC discussed the year’s obits a few days ago. The number of stored obits that they published spiked in the first quarter of 2016, but the rest of the year was ~average. That’s an incomplete view — they acknowledge some figures didn’t have stored obits — but may be representative. I think you have a point about relative ages of the known vs the people who particularly know them, but it’s also possible we’ve been sensitized by one miserable quarter.
Apparently the “stable” comment is coming from the press and not from her brother, who said she was moved from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, but is not in stable condition.
ICU generally means critical condition.
http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/carrie-fisher-heart-attack-star-wars-1201947925/
Chip Hitchcock: the BBC discussed the year’s obits a few days ago
Despite that article saying that there’s not a huge difference, their numbers are showing that 2016 stored obits used are 131% of that of 2015 — which is a significant increase.
The BBC’s lists are pretty limited, anyway. It would be interesting to compare a more global, comprehensive list from 2015 and 2016, but I don’t know that anyone has done those lists.
RedWombat on December 23, 2016 at 4:05 pm said:
Look, this is gonna sound weird but…I’m pretty young, not forty yet. Is this just how it is forever after a certain age? All your cultural touchstones dying one after another?
Remember the baby boom?
Well, the baby boom means there are a LOT of cultural touchstones in their later years right now.
To start with, the boom itself was a great wave of people, and thus a great wave of artists and actors and musicians and what have you, just because of the sheer number of us being born in those years.
And now the leading edge of it, the people born in 1946, have just turned seventy.
Add to that that the baby boomers were such a great audience for the people just a tad older than themselves.
Which is all a geeky way to say two things.
Yeah, I think it has always been the case that by your fifties you start losing people regularly when the “adults” you know start hitting three score years and ten.
That part is just built into existing in time and dealing with life and death and the end of things.
But I think it is also worse now, for us, than just “that’s life” because of that great elephant-in-the-snake demographic event, the baby boom, which means that suddenly an unwontedly large proportion of the population is hitting seventy all at once.
So yeah, I think it is probably worse than usual.
It sucks, it sucks, it sucks.
I really hope she is okay.
I’m with Crow on MST3K: I want to decide who lives and who dies.
Hoping there’s better news on Carrie Fisher tomorrow.
@ RedWombat
I’m afraid the short answer is, yes, this is how it’s going to be forever.
I wrote a longer answer back in April in poetic form.
* * *
There is nothing special
About this year, these deaths.
Time passes; lives end.
I was five when Kennedy was shot.
My mother sent me to school saying,
“This is why the teachers may cry.”
Years later she told me that I replied,
“Why is this death worse than every other death?”
Time passes; lives end.
Some in peace, some in violence,
Some in relief, some in triumph.
There is nothing special
About this year, these deaths.
When I was five, those who died
Were my parents’ heroes,
My grandparents’ companions.
They were old.
Old people die.
But for the lucky,
We live to see the day
When those who die are our heroes
Our companions.
It isn’t right that they die,
Because old people die,
And we aren’t old.
We can’t be old.
Ask a five year old, “Who died today?”
Who died last month,
Who all the deaths were in this year of years.
A five year old will say,
“Why is this death worse than any other death?”
These aren’t their heroes, their companions.
The lens moves on across the years and magnifies.
There is nothing special
About this year, these deaths.
Time passes; lives end.
Some too early; some too late.
Magnified by our attention.
We are lucky, who live to see our heroes die.
We live.
This hurts. Please get better, Carrie.
#RedWombat
I think there are three stages.
1) Under 30, you see the obits and ask “who was that?”
2) Under 70 (maybe) it’s as you describe.
3) Beyond 70, many of the people in the obits are younger than you, and you ask, “who was that?” 🙂
I’m not quite 60, so I’ll report when I see the transition. 🙂
Heather Rose Jones, damn. Now I’m crying. May I have your permission to forward this (with attribution)?
@Heather Rose Jones: That is beautiful.
Let’s hope for better news today. It would be a nice change.
@ Cassy B
Yes, if you like. Give it the dateline April 21, 2016 to be precise. In fact, that may do as a title–though I no longer remember exactly which death it was that tipped it over from “thinking thoughts” to “want to say something”.
Heather Rose Jones: Give it the dateline April 21, 2016 to be precise. In fact, that may do as a title–though I no longer remember exactly which death it was that tipped it over from “thinking thoughts” to “want to say something”.
It was probably Prince; he died that day. 🙁
Can’t wait for this awful year to be over. Pulling for you, Carrie.
@JJ: IMO you are selectively representing the article; it acknowledges that there was a huge jump in the Q1 deaths AND a resulting jump in deaths this year, but also shows deaths later in the year being ~average. ISTM that this is a relevant point.
Chip Hitchcock: IMO you are selectively representing the article; it acknowledges that there was a huge jump in the Q1 deaths AND a resulting jump in deaths this year, but also shows deaths later in the year being ~average. ISTM that this is a relevant point.
I don’t think that’s the case.
Here are the totals:
Year – Q1 – Q2-Q4 – Total Deaths
2015 – 12 – 20 – 32
2016 – 24 – 18 – 42
Note that the last obit in the Q2-Q4 numbers is from Dec 8, and that it looks likely that there are several more stored obits used since then (no way to tell how many of these notable persons had stored obits) — and there’s still a week left in the year.
Rick Parfitt
Piers Sellers
John Buckingham
Lionel Blue
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Alan Thicke
Jim Prior
Michael Nicholson
John Moffat
Ian McCaskill
A. A. Gill
I think that it’s quite likely that Q2-Q4 will be above “average” as well — just not as “above” as Q1.
It’s hard to separate the actual spikiness of the rate of celebrity death per unit time from the definition of celebrity being used. The BBC has for 2016 Q1=24, and Q2-Q4 = 18. If I count only celebrities in the list that I recognize, I get Q1 = 10, and Q2-Q4 = 12. Which makes Q1 look much more normal.
But, Bill, your definition is entirely subjective, while the BBC is using “persons notable enough in any field that we have ready-to-go obits for them.” Still not quite completely objective, but much stronger in that it doesn’t rely on one individual’s personal interests.
Lis Carey: But, Bill, your definition is entirely subjective, while the BBC is using “persons notable enough in any field that we have ready-to-go obits for them.” Still not quite completely objective, but much stronger in that it doesn’t rely on one individual’s personal interests.
Exactly. I don’t recognize a lot of the people on the BBC’s “pre-pared obits which we used” list from the last 5 years. But there are many, many people I consider highly significant who are not on their list.
Eliminating the people you don’t personally know renders the BBC’s previously-somewhat-objective stats irrelevant. 🙄
How is “persons notable enough in any field that we have ready-to-go obits for them” not just as subjective? Some editor at BBC made exactly the same decision – this person is noteworthy, that one isn’t.
Bill: How is “persons notable enough in any field that we have ready-to-go obits for them” not just as subjective? Some editor at BBC made exactly the same decision – this person is noteworthy, that one isn’t.
It’s not “just as subjective” — because it’s a whole data set, based on certain criteria.
You just arbitrarily removed half of their data set — and then claimed that their data doesn’t show what they say it shows. 🙄
Bill, I’m pretty sure it’s a consensus opinion among the editorial board (several people) rather than “some editor”. And that opinion would be informed by the amount of air-time previously devoted to that person. So, yes, a subjective opinion, but one agreed on by more than one person and influenced by objective criteria, and therefore somewhat less subjective than just one random opinion.
I don’t think any of you have established an objective definition of “celebrity”. The fact that it may be an editorial board instead of an individual means only that it is a group’s subjective opinion rather than an individual’s. If there is some “amount of air-time” requirement involved, that shifts the subjectivity to the daily producers of BBC news programs.
Bill: I don’t think any of you have established an objective definition of “celebrity”.
I don’t think that anyone here is trying to do so. I’m certainly not.
The point that I have been making (and you still seem to be missing) is that the BBC data is based on set criteria. It’s a statistical analysis of all of “something” — which is why you arbitrarily removing some of that data makes no sense.
My criteria for a notable celebrity differs vastly from theirs — but I’m not really inclined to spend the time to go through the 12,500 notable death names on Wikipedia from 2015 and 2016 and pull out the ones I personally feel are notable, to see whether my list for 2016 is significantly bigger than for 2015.
If you want to do that, and then talk about whether there really have been a lot more deaths in 2016 than in 2015, that’s a different story. But you attempting to deconstruct the BBC’s data is really of no interest to me, because it has no statistical significance whatsoever.
Debbie Reynolds @DebbieReynolds1 – 7 hours ago
Carrie is in stable condition. If there is a change, we will share it. For all her fans & friends. I thank you for your prayers & good wishes.
https://twitter.com/DebbieReynolds1/status/813112672002723841
Here’s another way of looking at the BBC obit data as objective: it’s based on the set of people considered noteworthy enough that obits were drafted while they were alive and expected to remain so. It isn’t based on an evaluation post mortem whether or not this person was “important”. It doesn’t matter where one sets the bar for importance or whether someone else’s criteria are the same as the BBC’s. It’s a comparison within a dataset of relative incidence. Unless one postulates that the BBC cast a much wider net for drafting advance obits at the beginning of 2016 than had been cast in previous years, that relative incidence is a valid statistic.
But you attempting to deconstruct the BBC’s data is really of no interest to me,
Then why put the time and effort into writing three posts telling me I’m wrong? Do you just enjoy being contrary?
I was going to point out that Wikipedia has pages for significant deaths in any given year, but I see that there are actually hundreds of pages per year–the top page for 2015 reaches only people with last names starting with “An.” No way I’m going to go through all that to see how many names I personally recognize from 2015 and 2016, but suffice it to say, every year lots of people die, and which ones you recognize and find significant is going to be different for each person.
(I still remember the day Isaac Asimov died–I was in college and my chemistry professor solemnly announced it at the beginning of class. I was the only student who even knew who he was.)
May the force be with her:
http://people.com/movies/carrie-fisher-dies/
Now Gary will always be waiting.
https://twitter.com/Gary_TheDog/status/812480095185174528
Thinking about Gary waiting for his mom is just reducing me to tears.
Darren Garrison on December 26, 2016 at 3:58 am
I remember openign up the LA Times website at lunch one day and discovering that one of my uncles-by-marriage had died. (Heck of a way to find out; I knew he’d been ill for some time.)