Woofer

   The screams came from the tree-line a hun dred yards away, and nothingaboutthem was funny. Help. Somebody please help. Help Kevin. He’s bleeding to death.
   Gloeckler looked back over his shoulder at me. We were trudging through a snowy field, carrying a bunch of equipment piled on a backboard. The tree-line seemed light years away. Screw it, I said. Let’s go.I dropped my end of the backboard and started to run.

   Later, in a nice warm classroom, Paul Nicolazzo showed us a videotape of this fool who had let ASR get the best of him and was running toward the scene of an accident. ASR is short for Autonomic Stress Reaction, a condition which often includes mass amounts of adrenaline and is pretty much a given any time you have a serious accident. Victims exhibit it. Bystanders get it. Rescuers do too.

   Nicolazzo was instructing a Wilderness First Responder Course, originally developed for Outward Bound by a group called Wilderness Medical Associates. And Nicolazzo was hot.

   The fool on videotape was me. “This is exactly how you get roped in by an hysterical person and lose control of an accident scene,” Nicolazzo explained. He drew a neat little zig-zag diagram which showed two possible responses: what happens when you run to them, or when you make the hysterical bystander come to you.

   This was a 64 hour course, (but really more like 85). We started Saturday and basically never quit until the next Friday. I’ve had an EMT, etc. This was ten times better. It was built just for us.

   Mornings we had class. Afternoons we practiced. Everyday the simulations got more real. Harder. Before the week was out we’d been exposed to or confronted by more pertinent stuff than you could shake a stick at. Like: a systematic response pattern for all injuries; spine injury- how and when to rule it out; dislocations- how to reduce them; CPR- the real story; death. Vital signs- how and why do you take them (really)? The only kind of shock to worry about. The right way to splint people. What serious problems always accompany near drowning? Etc. They made us give ourselves shots so we wouldn’t hesitate too long if anaphylaxis really showed up. They strapped us onto backboards so we’d know what that felt like. Etc.

   Paul Nicolazzo. Wilderness Medical Associates. Whatever it costs, do it. It’s worth it.

Lew Steiger