Monday, October 31, 2005

Training complete! Results are in the mail...


Yesterday Grant and I finished our wilderness first aid training. At the end of the day we did a couple scenarios where the patients had make-up on to make the trauma and drama more real. I volunteered to be one of the 5 patients for the very last scenario, wondering if I would be able to keep in my role.

So, imagine that you and 4 friends are on a climbing trip. You’re hiking down a trail and you’re looking for a good place to stop for lunch. Your leader says, “hey, look up there, I bet there’s a good view!” and so the group starts to climb up a steep hill to the view when all of a sudden you lose your grip, you’re falling in a rock slide, maybe 20 feet down. So there were 5 of us who got hurt. I had life threatening bleeding and a broken left arm plus a bump on my head. Another person had life threatening bleeding on his shoulder. The third person was unconscious with blood dripping out his ears. The fourth person had minor cuts but was freaking out and tried to get all the rescuers’ attention on her. The fifth person, the leader, was refusing treatment because he was feeling guilty about what happened to his friends.

There were about 15 rescuers practicing on the 5 different people. I was found on my side, blood going down my shirt into the grass. My rescuers, noticing that I had bleeding, gently rolled me to my back so they could inspect it. Once they got to skin, they saw the red tape and knew it was life threatening bleeding. Elevation and compression followed. In real life I was laying under a road/bridge/overpass that was leading up to the golden gate bridge. It was about 4:30pm and the ground was damp. In real life I was getting cold and starting to shiver. This was beautiful because for the scenario, they thought I was going into shock. In real life, I always have problems with my hands getting too cold, turning white, getting tingly, then numb. We think I have Raynaud’s Syndrom. This worked well for the scenario again, because my hands were actually losing color, so they thought I was having a circulatory problem. Then when my fingers actually went numb (on both sides, not just the broken arm side), they thought I had a spinal injury. I really had my rescuers working on me! Add in some tears because it was easy to cry with so many emotions in the area anyways, and we had a pretty intense scenario.

The training was a lot of fun. There was so much information thrown at us that I know I won’t remember everything, but with my patient assessment check-off list and my little blue book of wilderness first aid, I feel much more confident taking teens out into the woods who have never been. Not that I ever want to use any of my training on them! Now I have to wait for my test results to know if I'm actually certified for wilderness first aid. The test had some tricks to it.

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