playing doctor

Christy and I spent the weekend in a Medical Care for Long Distance Sailors and Wilderness First Aid class. It was taught by a local retired vascular surgeon. He was a fantastic teacher and led a brilliant class. He brought in pig bellies, excuse me, porcine models so we could practice slicing and poking and suturing and stapling. Here's a small sample of things we discussed:

• how to insert a chest tube to reinflate a collapsed lung


• how to set a femur back into a hip socket


• how to give injections of local anesthesia


• how to staple a laceration shut (friggin' cool)


• how to deal with a hemmorhoid (not friggin' cool, especially the pictures)

Ask us what we can do with a Foley catheter, hehehe.

Of course, this training only very absotively brushes the surface of what we should know to reasonably take care of someone. But the idea behind the class is that if you're 1800 miles off the coast of Mexico or 22 miles back into the North Cascades, what are ya gonna do? What are ya gonna do?

This class + good first aid kit + good reference books = better than a poke in the eye.


I got to practice my plaster casting skills on Christy's wrist.


Won't somebody think of the children?


A one-legged man in a butt kicking contest.


In case you can't tell, that's a putter that my leg is splinted to.