About 12 years ago, while building my house, I suffered a traumatic brain injury during a fall on concrete, in which I landed on my head. Fortunately, no permanent damage was done, but I did acquire a good excuse for which to blame my seemingly increasing loss of memory. That experience piqued my interest in medical responder training. But, time went by, and I never followed through. Then some years later, while on a trip to Nicaragua, one in our group of four abruptly fell over in cardiac arrest. In spite of our attempts at CPR, we never brought him back. That really piqued my interest in a medical training, especially when I found out he had Tuberculosis, and all of us who performed mouth to mouth were required to get tested. Fortunately again, I did not contract TB. My good intentions for training fell victim yet again to timing and schedules. Then a few years after that, during a rare, first-class upgrade on a non-stop flight from Fairbanks to Minneapolis, I opened the airplane bathroom door to find an older, overweight man in cardiac arrest. I said #$!!!@, it’s happening again! The plane was diverted for an emergency landing in Canada, but after extensive CPR en-route, we lost him too.
It's amazing what a little morticians wax can do in the hands of our instructors. Maria holds an impressive smile for her apparent facial injury which was the result of a vehicle accident in a multi-casualty simulation. My handy Iphone snapshot.
That was the tipping point for me, but it still took a few years to get the timing right, which brings me to this post. I’m 6 days into a Wilderness First Responder class being taught through the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It’s an aggressive 96 hour class, 12 hours a day for four days, then one day off, then four more. It’s value reaches immensely beyond “wilderness” although largely focused on the medical response in a place like Alaska, which is in many cases, remote and far from Urban health care. Although I don’t recommend waiting until you are my age (47) to take the class, one benefit is the reflective assessment of my own history of injuries, and those I’ve observed throughout the years. A lot of insight and understanding has been shed upon those experiences, along with many clarifications, and television myth corrections about health and medical practice.
The reason I’m taking a moment to address this issue on a blog about photographing in Alaska, is that the remote context of much of my own travel endeavors, happens far from conventional urban medical care and facilities. Because of this, the importance of the class is self-evident. I encourage all of my colleagues and friends to take this course if you have not already done so. It is taught by two very competent, experienced, and dynamic teachers who have no problem holding your attention for 12 hours at a time-something I consider an epic task all by itself. You can learn more about instructor Deb Ajango and the class at www.SafetyEd.net. Put it in your academic lineup and you won’t be disappointed. And, you are likely to learn something to not only help yourself in the future, but someone else will be a likely benefactor as well.
