Rescue on Skookumchuck trail and other adventures

Before anything I have to give credit to Brad and Julie of the WEMT and WFR classes for letting me use their pictures in my blog. The makeup used is quite convincing and helps put you in the mindset of fixing injured patients. In the wilderness it is more often than not the case that leaves and dirt and in this case sticks are in the patients wounds, another factor that must be considered in treatment. 

Last Friday we had our first big wilderness test... in the pouring rain. After getting geared up with packs rain coats and rain pants I arrived on the scene of the person I had to rescue. I threw at tarp over them, gave them food and drink after completing a Rapid Trauma Assessment (RTA) to make sure their head and spine was okay I built a splint for their damaged ankle with my sleeping mat and extra clothing. It was fun, but the challenge of the rain was to not get the inside of the splint wet, and to keep the patient dry. My patient decided he wanted to be  very "irritable" and tried to give me attitude as I fixed his splint up. Another factor to make the simulation all the more realistic.
We try to have fun on the weekends in the outdoors, and as you can see we have a bunch of wilderness enthusiast characters in our class.

 Yesterday another student Harry and I went to do our clinical at Memorial Hospital. I have already completed one clinical at North Conway Ambulance. However, we did not receive any emergency calls so I just chatted with the EMTs, watched a movie, and then went to visit the fire station which is also right near the train station. We stayed at the first aid station because they were having a special "Thomas the Train" event so lots of kids were around. It was very anticlimactic, especially since I was very nervous before I went, afraid I would see a car wreak, a death, cardiac event, or some other traumatic or medical emergency.

In the hospital I watched a little four year old get staples in his head where he banged it going down a slide, a man getting interviewed for kidney problems, and a 16 year old get abrasions cleaned out after he wiped out on his bicycle. The most interesting case was one gentleman who came in with what he was afraid was a dislocated patella (knee cap). However he had a small fracture. He decided to operate. So Harry and I got changed into scrubs, put on lead covering (to protect us from the x-rays that they took throughout the surgery). We got to watch from right in the OR as they put two straight pieces of metal to hold the bits on, and a figure 8 wire in to his knee cap. It was crazy to watch someone get cut open and poked and prodded then sewn back up! We stayed an extra half hour so we could watch the full procedure. It was amazing! My interest in the medical field has grown from all that I am seeing and learning!!

This is a picture of my roommate getting her arm splinted up during a simulation.

After getting home and settling to bed at around 11:45 following my memorial hospital clinical I heard out "RESCUERS" being called down the hall way of the dorm. Bill, the teacher, was waking us all up because a girl was stuck on Skookumchuck trail with a knee injury (remind me to never mess up my knee!) Some rescuers had already arrived with a stretcher and had been working since midnight to get her down. After driving to and hiking the muddy rocky trail with headlamps we came upon the "fish cops" at 4:30 am. It took until about 6:45 to load her into the ambulance. Luckily the girl was only about 110 pounds, but it was still a challenge  to carry her. This is a picture from practice we did in class- 

We switched off having 6 people carry at a time. There were 10 people from SOLO (including myself, the only female of the group). My hands are a bit achy after gripping the liter for all that time. The trail we traversed was much rougher than the well groomed flat trail we practiced on in class. After getting home I went to 8:30 mass at beautiful "Our Lady of the Mountains" church and get home and slept until 4.