I just spent two full days doing a CPR and first aid course. I learned
- How to save people
- TV is full of shit
- Natural selection still has a ways to go
First up: CPR
If you need to do CPR on someone, they’re for all intents and purposes – dead. They are no longer breathing and / or their heart has stopped.
Meet the dead heads. As far as dummies go, these guys are pretty cool. Inside their chests, they have a metal plate that clicks when you push on them, so that you know you are pushing on the right place. It is kind of like using clicker training for your dog. Unfortunately for us though, humans don’t have the same metal plate.
Since I’d be bringing him back to life over and over, I decided to name my dummy. He had no arms, no legs and was lying on the floor, so I named him Mat.
We also learned how to use a defibrillator – which looks not unlike my old Fisher Price Speak and Spell. Apparently, they are made to look like toys so that people aren’t freaked out when they have to use them.
Anyway, the defib is what they always do on Grey’s Anatomy when the doctor is yelling ‘charging!!!’ and rubbing the two panels together. The patient is flat lining and needs to be ‘shocked back to life’.
This is complete horseshit.
In real life, the shock is meant to ‘stop’ (the fibrillation of) the heart. The result of the shock can actually cause the patient to flat line (desired behaviour, sort of), so CPR can be performed to encourage the heart to start beating normally again.
I feel so mislead.
In other news, Viagra was initially formulated as medication for a heart condition called Angina. As a side effect it also happened to help with boners.
Note: If you every run into someone who needs you to help them take their Nitroglycerine – even if it’s a woman – make sure to first ask her if she is taking Viagara. Because you can’t have both.
Awkward, but you may save a life.
We also had little baby dummies which were a whole new level of creepy. For the entire class they were piled up together…watching my every move… like an army of deadly Chucky dolls.
Generally, we hang out with people like ourselves. If you are educated, your friends are likely educated. You share common sense. You understand each other. Our lives are generally sheltered from the ‘general public’.
When you go to a course like this, you meet all sorts of people and are forced to interact with them. Like people who can’t count – 30 chest compressions somehow translates to 15, or 12, or sometimes none at all. People that can’t remember which group they were in 10 minutes ago, even though we didn’t change groups. People who sleep through entire modules.
When it is my time to die, I hope these people aren’t around to save me.
All in all it was a really fun, super interactive 2 days. And I learned how to save lives.
When I get home I’ll ask Gaston to be unconscious so I can practice.
