CMA Report #4

How can it possibly be Friday again already? I just posted a report. Let me see, what has happened since I last posted? On Friday, we cleaned house, and did usual Friday things. Saturday, I mowed the yard, hopefully for the last time before next year.:) Sunday was a welcome day of rest. Monday was, well, it was Monday. I was trying to get as much done as I could for class and Family Round-Up. Tuesday was spent in much the same way except Dad and I had class in the evening. Wednesday I taught writing class in the afternoon and then in the evening I wrote my report. Thursday it rained none stop all day long here. Mom, Sarah and I went to check on our booth at Connie's. We all had class in the evening for the book "5,000 Year Leap." We finished the book! If you have never read it, you should! Wow did I learn a lot about the principles of the Constitution! It is a must read for anyone interested in politics. And that brings us to Friday morning. Well, I guess I have been rather busy.

Okay, here is the report. I hope you enjoy it.:) At least I know one person reads it. Thanks, Hank.:) By the way, this one is longer than the others.:)

CMA Report #4

Welcome to class four of CMA - Traumatic Emergencies. Our instructor this time was none other than Ike Isenhower! And, yes, he is related to president Eisenhower. That was one of the first things he told us.

Ike Isenhower showing us a splint

It took a little while for everyone to arrive this time. Again, Marc wasn’t there but had left instructions for Ike. We got our food and Ike started talking.
Once again the importance of scene safety was stressed.
“If the scene is not safe, don’t go there! If it means that the victim will die, then so be it. It is going to do no one any good to have two or three people die. I know it sounds terrible, and I am thankful I don’t have to decide who dies. Each one is going to die sometime. But I’m glad I’m not the One in charge. In the earlier days of METS, five years was the average time someone would spend working in METS. Now some of the guys have been here twenty years. You have to have a sense of humor and be able to laugh about things, or you won’t last.”

We talked about bleeding and how to stop it. He said, “It usually looks worse than it really is. We get calls from people that say someone is bleeding to death, but when we arrive, it really isn’t anything serious. Unlike most TV and Hollywood scenes where there is blood everywhere and stuff, that isn’t all that common. If some object is sticking in a person, leave it there. You could not only cause more damage by trying to remove it, but it is sealing off the blood vessels in that area.”

At this point Ike had to show us a thing he had just found on the internet. A young newly married couple were driving in the wilderness of somewhere (I don’t remember what state it was.) when a branch suddenly shot through the passenger window and through the lady’s neck! It wasn’t any little branch either. It missed every vital thing in her neck. Of course they thought she was dying and were trying to say goodbye as the husband drove her to the nearest hospital. At the hospital, they airlifted her to another hospital where they did six hours of surgery to remove the branch and fix her. She is fine now.

Here are some tips for nosebleeds. Do not tip the victim’s head back, or they could choke on the blood. Put pressure on the bridge of the nose or on the upper lip.

Okay, then it was on to burns. Not something I could stand very well. Blood is one thing, but burns, bad ones is another. I will mention this, Ike is also a firefighter, and he told us that when they go into a burning building, and they are feeling their way around, they are taught to feel with the back of their hand. That is so if they touch a hot wire, their reflex will jerk their arm away from it and not grab a hold of it. Don’t mess with electrical wires! Whether it is a fence or a power line. If you are in a car that is under or touching a power line, DO NOT get out until police or other personnel who know tell you to. In the car you are safe, but if any of you touches the ground and the car at the same time, well, lets just say you weren’t very smart to try it.

Ike: “One thing you don’t have to worry about with METS is job security. As long as people continue to be stupid, METS will be around. There is a new way to cook meth. You shake it up in a bottle. With all those chemicals, the thing blows up in their hands quite often. Another stupid thing people do is with their cleaning. They have a stain, and they decide to mix a little of this with a little of that cleaning product and then some of this and some of that and then the stuff blows up in their face.”
Moral: always read the labels of cleaning products, and don’t mix them with others! You also might want to think about what is in that stuff if it can blow up.:}

In the talk about dislocations, Ike told a story of one time when he was at a football game. One of the players had injured himself. His knee was dislocated and they were loading him onto the backboard to take him to the hospital. Well, his leg was sticking out to the side, so Ike moved it back in front (they usually don’t move any injured limb but leave that to the doctors), and it popped his knee back in place. The player wanted to get back in the game, but Ike told him if he wanted to walk again, then to go to the hospital. That sounds like a fifteen-year-old guy, doesn’t it?

Strains. Now, I do want you to know that we were sitting in a dim room so we could see the slides (okay, it was probably really a power point, if you want to get technical). There were some dim lights on the two edges of the room and none in the middle. Ike started off by saying,
“Now you’ve all twisted your ankle or sprained it.”
I, sitting on the far side of the room, instinctively shake my head slightly as I had never had that experience.
Ike: “You have never strained your ankle?” He was looking right at me.
I shook my head with a smile.
Ike: “Why my daughter can walk down the hall and strain her ankle. Okay, MOST of us have strained our ankle.”
I was trying not to laugh. Sorry to disappoint you, but the most exciting thing that I have done is to roll off a stopped sled and break my arm. Nothing exciting about that.
The best treatment for a strain (this is for those who do strain their ankles) is to rest it. It could take up to six weeks for a strain to heal. Also ice and elevation (higher than the heart). You can also wrap it up as that can help. When you do put ice on it, only do it for no more than twenty minutes at a time. Some people leave the ice on there so long that they frost bite the area.

After that we got into splints, C-collars, backboards and such. Did you know that a C-collar will not keep a persons neck immobilized? I didn’t.

After a short break, we got hands on. That is when the fun really began. We got to see and feel the padded aluminum that they use for splints. You can bend it to whatever shape you need. Then we got the C-collars.

Mandy putting a C-Collar on Paula

Does it go like this?

Dad tried putting one on me.
Ike came over and showed him how a strap was supposed to go and then said,
“She could actually use the “baby” one.” As he had just gotten that one out, he quickly took off the other and put the “baby” one on me.

the "baby" one that fit

“Her neck is tall enough for the larger one, but it is so small the “baby” one fits better.” Of course everyone was watching, and there were cameras out. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable. I was expecting much worse. Ike said it was just mostly to remind the person not to move their neck. As I was waiting for Paula to take my picture, Ike says,
“And look at that, she smiles and even has the look of Marilyn Monroe.”

Marilyn Monroe? I hope not!

Tell me, who is this person I’m supposed to look like? Do I look like her, and do I want to?:)

We practiced the neck hold.

Practicing the head hold

That is done not just until they get the C-collar on, as I had always thought, but until they get the person on the backboard and have their head strapped in place with the “blocks.”

Ed on the backboard getting the "head blocks" put on

Ed was our victim, and he got strapped on the backboard. There was more talk about different things and then we were done.

A little more talk

“Don’t forget to fill out your evaluation forms or whatever it is that you have, or Marc will have my head.”
And then we all headed home.

I hope you enjoyed this class and will return next week as we head to the airport to drive the ambulances, watch an extraction by the fire department and see one of the Eagle One choppers. Until then, this is Rebekah, your reporter for the CMA. Thanks for joining me.

Will you come back next week?