Into the Wild

This past weekend, I took a Wilderness First Aid class from the American Red Cross. It was a full two days of instruction and an eclectic mix of humans signed up for it. There were three scout leaders including myself. The two BSA leaders were the life of the party; they were like a vaudevillian act -- a regular Abbot & Costello. There were two girls who were in college and taking this class to work as wilderness or river guides this summer. There was one gal who works full time at a local summer camp and is also an American Red Cross instructor; and another who was the first aider for those historical reenactments -- think Civil War and stuff like that. The guy who was my partner much of the time was a motorcycle enthusiast who last year logged over 6,500 miles over the summer who plans on visiting his daughter who works in Africa. Our instructor is a long time firefighter, now a full time instructor for the Red Cross. He intends to get into Nursing School. He was on a waiting list last year so his hopes for admission are good this year.

Whenever I take an American Red Cross class, I try too keep it on the down low that I have my BSN. The minute the instructors catch wind of that, they teach differently. The other members of the class start to ask me questions and sometimes they defer to me. So unless they ask directly, I don't say anything. When the class is asked a question in general, I wait to answer unless everybody is stumped. Invariably, I'll say something that outs me. Usually some knee jerk medical or anatomical term that outs me -- like who in everyday speak says, "distal to the injury?" Apparently, me. This time it was in conversation with another student when we were talking about telegraphing how scared you are to the patient. That you should never let them see how freaked out you are. And I said, "ah yes, the nurse face." I didn't tell the story of the patient who had untreated breast cancer who was in her final stages and had never let anybody see her chest save her doctor. After building a trusting relationship with her, the nurse who was relieving me of her care and I were allowed to see her chest. Both of us maintained our best nurse faces when she lowered her gown, but when we left the room we both were shaken. I'm sure if the guy from "Lie to Me," saw us, he'd have seen the micro expressions of horror and helplessness we certainly were feeling when we saw the tumors that covered 60% of her chest, but we kept our faces still and passive.

I made it almost through the entire first day without being outed. At first, when the instructor asked me, I tried to be evasive and said that I had some training. But when he asked me directly, "are you a nurse?" I said that I was but hadn't practiced in 15 years. The second day the instructor started asking me questions directly. The other students started asking me questions too. And this is why I try to keep that stuff on the down low.

Because here's the thing, I suppose when it comes to sussing out what might be wrong, how the body would react to what kind of trauma, what kind of illness might be at play, I do have an advantage. But as far as:  we are in the middle of nowhere, there is snow on the ground and more snow coming, and we're about 2 hours away from help so what should we do -- I'm not so good.

Some of the stories these guys shared were really interesting but almost all of them ended in some kind of fatality. Scary stuff happens. Worse that all the stories were real.

I suppose there is something inside of a person that makes them raise their hand when asked, "will you help?" And these folks were all of that ilk. Maybe it is because they have witnessed some scary stuff in their time in nature. But maybe that's the point. Discontent to live with the helplessness of ignorance, they seek out ways to be helpers. I think it is telling that at one point during the class, all the men's cell phones went off in an alarming way. They all sounded like Emergency Alert sirens. Turns out it was an Amber Alert. They all had them on their phones.

Yup, helpers.

I had a lot of fun pretending to be sick and broken. When one of the BSA guys came over to help me and put his hands on me before identifying himself, I screamed, "Who are you?! Don't touch me?! Why are you touching me?!" Heh. It was fun.

Also amusing was how insistent our instructor was about my male partner not doing a sternal examination on me. He must have said it 3 or 4 times. And then when it was my turn to do my male partner's exam, the instructor came over to tell me that it would be perfectly okay to examine my partner's sternum. I get it. Boobs. It was funny.

All in all, I enjoyed our class. I told everybody there that we'll do a reunion in 2 years with our same classmates because it was such a fun group dynamic.