"Its all fun and games until someone looses a pulse"

EMT camp is awesome. We had "respira-palusa" last week where half the class (20 guys and 4 ladies) was a station where they would have a dummy (adult, child or infant) and say something like "I walked out of the room for like a second and my little brother was playing with one of his toys and tried to stick it in a socket" or "This man was complaining of chest pain... I don't know him" or they would pretend they were choking and still conscious... and then passed out after a minute or so as we tried to dislodge whatever they were choking on, or we would come upon a scene where there was just someone lying there... or rolling around on the groud complaining of pain and based on the symptoms they told us were present as we felt pulses, listened to breathing, and did quick physical exams we had to figure out what was wrong and act out what our role should be.

Classes are LONG! (8-12 1-4:30 and 5:30-7) but I could not ask for a better teacher. Bill was one of the SOLO wilderness medicine schools first, and so knows how to teach (with all the voices) for hours on end. He is still and EMT in Maine and NH and has seen *well almost* every type of trauma, medical problem, or wilderness scenereo in the book.

 We also received our complete medical handbag kits. They have everything from acebandages to stethescopes and sphygmonometers. We practiced listening to eachothers lungs and taking blood pressures. I am honestly having so much fun studying my text book. While some parts can be tedious the human body is AWESOME! I love learning about the details we just passed over in highschool.

Like I said there are only three other girls beside myself, and we all range in age from seventeen to sixty something (One of the boys was actually in a Model United Nations Committee I chaird... small world). One of my room mates is from Washington DC, and the other from Florida. People have come from Kansas, South Carolina, California, France, and Iceland and other places and everyone has awesome life and travel stories. While we come from all walks of life we have fun together and get along very well. (THIS POST I WROTE EARLIER than the date that it says it was published but I didn't get a chance to publish earlier than this).