Rain, rain going away, heat on way
Boston is about to get hit with a blazing heat wave, and local docs are warning residents to pay attention to signs of heat-related illness to avoid a trip to the emergency department.
“People I see with heat exhaustion say it just snuck up on them,” said Dr. Ali Raja, vice chairman of Massachusetts General Hospital’s emergency department. “But there’s usually a half-hour time period when they had muscle cramps, spasms and were sweating, when they could have gotten into cooler temperatures.”
Temps will creep into the low 90s over the next week, but some days it’ll feel like nearly 100, according to the forecast.
Along with muscle cramps, heat exhaustion is usually characterized by fatigue, weakness, excessive sweating and headache.
By the time heat stroke sets in, the sweating generally stops and the skin is dry. It is accompanied by increased body temperature to 104-106 degrees, and can lead to convulsions.
“Especially with the humidity, in addition to the 90-degree heat, that’s absolutely warm enough to experience pretty significant heat illness,” said Dr. John Broach, division director for EMS and Disaster Medicine at UMass Memorial Health Care. “In people who are medically vulnerable they can get sick very quickly and not realize it until they are incapacitated.”
Those who are especially at risk are the elderly and those who are impaired by drugs and alcohol, said Dr. Matthew Mostofi, associate chief of the department of emergency medicine at Tufts Medical Center.
“The elderly, living on the top floor of a triple-decker, they don’t get out and don’t have air conditioning. They go to sleep and no one finds them for two days,” Mostofi said. “Or if you drink a bottle of alcohol, you go to sleep in a 108-degree attic, and you just don’t wake up.”
He said it is important to keep an eye on vulnerable people during this type of weather.
“The people who are impaired in some way,” Mostofi said, “those are the people during the heat wave we need to check on.”