Author: Emmanuelle Chaze – Red-Cross « WordPress.com Tag Feed
On the 23rd of December, I followed a one-day First Aid training offered by the Red Cross. I had meant to do that for years, but somehow always opted out of doing it. Now that I have a concrete goal, that of going helping in Lesvos, I figured it would really not go amiss.
I also wanted to make sure my German was good enough to follow such training. Probably making excuses – most of the things are not theory, but practice, and don’t require any language skills. The training lasted nine hours. I remember when I passed my driving license, one of the instructor was getting mad at me all the time because I was asking too many questions instead of trying to drive. I just like to understand things before I do them, so I figured I had to understand the mouth-to-mouth method before practicing it.
Now I know it’s no rocket science, but before the course I had always wondered what good it could bring to force CO2 into the lungs of someone not breathing normally. Now that I’m *trained*, I understood that the main thing is to keep the lungs functioning and irrigated, and that even CO2 instead of oxygen can do just that (obviously I didn’t graduate from med school). I also didn’t know that only once in a million times would the person on whom the resuscitation act is performed wake up while you’re trying to keep him going. Most of the time, you would just provide him with air long enough for his brain to be saved before the real helpers – the paramedics, arrive.
Also, apparently you can happily break a rib away, it means you’re actually doing something efficient. But if you do, just be aware that you’re probably performing your cardiac massage a tad too eagerly. So ease up, but sustain the pace. 30 massages, two mouth-to-mouth, 30 massages, two mouth-to-mouth, for as long as it takes for the ambulance and medics to arrive.
Since most of the people were here because they needed to get their certificate to pass their driving license, most of the course was oriented on road accidents. My German vocabulary considerably widened on top of now being able – in theory, and in practice without the stress induced by a real situation – to handle an injured person. The several workshops were instructive, although I didn’t really find room for my questions, such as “what to do when a boat comes ashore?” and other sea-related questions. That will come with the First Aid at sea training.