Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

I’m going to skip the day by day detail. Although I’m sure it’s going in, we’ve done so much that I’ve lost track what day we did each thing on. Somewhere in there we’ve added heart/lung issues, seizures, animal bites, allergies, diabetes, search & rescue.

Of particular note was our night time scenario which took place last night in woods about 17 miles north of Flagstaff. We were divided into 6 groups of 5 which each group sent off into the woods at different points being told we would know our scenario when we came to it. I had been prepped before hand to trip, fall and present a broken leg with bone sticking out. I had been made up to look quite gross under my jeans. I was told to make it appear real to test the rest of the team under duress. For a while I got away with it but was rumbled eventually. During all this one of the other team member went into a seizure (again preplanned) so the remaining three now had two patients to deal with. All the other teams had the same deal.

Once we had finished, our team was set up to be a mass incident for the remaining five teams to deal with. This one got very creative with much makeup (moulage) and acting being used. We had a serious head injury, a lost hand, a disembowelment, a guy with two crushed forearms and my role was a crushed chest. The rest of the parties thought they were heading back to camp and got a nice surprise.

I had a lot of fun playing victim although lying on the ground I got quite cold. I was one of only two people who played victim twice so this time I didn’t get a chance to play rescuer.

We’ve been allowed a lie in for day 9. Class starts at 9am not 8am and today is expected to be revision day. Tomorrow it is exams and practical tests. Then we’ll hopefully all be done and proudly call ourselves WFRs (pronounced Wiffers or Woofers depending on who says it).

We’ve now passed the half way mark and have covered all the trauma possibilities and how to stabalize them.  We can deal with burns, fractures, dislocations & cold/heat illnesses.  I’m sure if I look at my book there will be more but right now the lights are out and everyone is asleep.

We had more simulations which are beginning to take longer as we’re expected to follow through with remdial action as well as initial diagnosis which was the focus of early scenarious.  We finished off day 5 with a scenario involving 5 patients where we had to organize and respond to an explosion.  We had various issues to deal with.  One patient had two broken legs.  Another had a stick impaled in his arm.  Another had a dislocated arm and burns.  Another was delerious with inhalation burns and vomiting with rapidly deteriorating signes.  Another had a chest puncture wound.  We had to coordinate 5 separate teams allocating finite resources (including rescuers) among them as more was learned.  A lot of fun and much learned.

Today we have a day off to release the pressure building in our brains.  We’re going to be waking early and heading off to climb the trail up to Humphries Peak.  It’s a 3,000 foot climb and we hope to be rewarded with great views as this is Arizona’s highest point.  Interestingly one of the guys on the course has recently been involved with repairing the trail we’ll be on.  We should be down by midday when we intend to head off to Meteor crater and do some sight seeing.

All for now.  Alarm just went off and nobody stirred.  Back to me being Mr. Popular as I wake up the snorers.

Our brains are filling up and there is much more to do. Day 3 we learned all about chest injuries, shock and head injuries. We learned how to do a focused spinal assessment to allow us to make a good judgment call regarding the possibility of spinal injury. We also learned a bit about dental issues including abscesses.

We continue to do scenarios where part of the class (taking turns) act out being a patient and others come to assess. I’m already losing track of the list of scenarious so here is the list so far.

• Broken collar bone with grazed forehead
• Broken wrist with hidden back injury
• Fallen off roof in thunderstorm with broken wrist
• Broken collarbone, grazed palm, dehydration and mild shock
• Finding someone wedged between two trees or wrapped around fence
• Internal bleeding / shock following river accident
• Head wound following rock throwing accident

As a rescuer you have no idea what you’re going to get.  It keeps us on our toes.  We always make one or two mistakes but each time we reinforce the right behaviours and learn from what we missed.  Even as the patient one learns as you get to watch what the others do.