04/07

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Medical training

What have a Hobo, a Brazilian Wanderer and a Neil Youngi all got in common?  No, you probably didn’t guess it – they’re all spiders we can expect to make camp with over the next three months.  Lovely.  And more than a little frightening if you’re jumpy around even the most harmless house spider.

Over the next two days, based in the rather beautiful Holland Park Youth Hostel (which has to be one of London’s best kept secrets) Adam and I bandaged each other up (ahem), chanted Nelly the Elephant as we performed CPR on Danni (the mannequin man with a special hairstyle) and got stretchered through a crowded park in a foil sleeping bag much to the utter amusement of the local crowd. Indeed, at one point a curious onlooker was overheard asking whether this was ‘some kind of art installation’.  Well, we were in W12.  And then we splinted our legs using bits of tree and spare rucksacks and probably answered his question.

Joking aside, Wilderness First Aid Training is essential training on a trip like ours.  It focuses on what you can do to help someone when you are more than an hour from definitive medical care (i.e if an ambulance or an adequate hospital is more than an hour away).  This meant we learned about popping dislocations back in (gross!), fractures, types of wounds and burns, heart attacks, and the less dramatic, but more likely problems such as anaphylactic shock, asthma attacks, altitude sickness, and diabetic emergencies.   And we came across a brilliant product used by the military to stop severe bleeding – Quick Clot, made rather fittingly from volcanic ash.  Maybe we can make our own when we get to Eyjafjallajokull (a word we’ve been practising saying for a while now).

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) runs Wilderness Medical Training, which is billed as essential for any expedition groups, solo travellers, trek leaders and overland drivers.  You can get great medical supplies from Nomad Travel Pharmacy, as well as all the jabs you need.  We’re hoping we won’t have to use any of our new found knowledge, but it would be fun to splint up Adam using a sand ladder.