Jungle Rescue

We did a little first aid training stuff today, which was a wonderful refresher for Woofer. (Wilderness First Responder). It reminded me just how much I –love- this stuff, the creative problem solving, the leadership, the practicality, the adrenaline, to team work. Oih! So cool! We did a practice rescue. Our subject, Ellen “A.K.A. Chris”, was up a steap slippery rocky hill in the jungle. We found her splinted her arm and leg and had to get her down the mountain across a stream, through a meadow, over a small river and to the “helicopter pad” (fire circle) in about an hour and a half. My group did very well. For parts of it i preformed as a woofer (great practice), and for others I asked the group to do what they though best so that would get a chance to creative problem solve ext. (since they weren’t also woofers and this was their first rescue). They made an excellent leg split. We thought about making a litter (back woods stretcher) but we knew that they took a long time, and there was only 45 min before flash floods carried us away and made helicopter landing impossible. So we BEAMed her (carried her across our arms as a team) all the way there. It was exhausting, and exhilarating. In the humidity, we were literally dripping sweat like small waterfalls off our chins. But if I do say so myself, we did marvelously as a team. Decisions were swift and consensus based, we had a flow of leadership and ideas, we scouted ext.. We arrived on time, first, (9 min before flash floods). 2 of the 4 groups just BEAMed intead of building a litter (we weren’t told about how to build litters or spints or anyting – but a few of us knew from previous training). We got the Burly Award. Aparently no one has ever done that before. Haha. Actualy though, my team agreed it was the right choice considering the situation and constraints. We knew we could carry her, (it wasn’t far all in all for a recue) and we were tight on time. Wilderness medicine is so amazing!