Humanoid Health and First Aid, Wednesday, Period 1

[deaddadsclub]

"Alright, pop quiz," Cristina said at the top of class. She was in a weirdly good mood, today. That couldn't bode well. "Giant sinkhole opens up in the middle of town, swallowing people and cars and maybe part of a building." She frowned, sighed, and shook her head. "No cars here, so let's say in Baltimore. You're on the scene, because the universe hates you, but you're lucky enough not to get caught in the immediate collapse. There's a woman trapped at the bottom under her own car, pinned by the leg. She needs immediate medical attention, but the ground's too unstable to risk moving the car to get her out. What do you do?"

She looked around at the students. "If your answer is 'cut off her leg', congratulations! That is exactly what Drs. Owen Hunt and Calliope Torres, two of the finest surgeons on the planet, decided to do when this exact thing happened in Seattle a couple — six? Seven — years ago. The extra fun part is that the sinkhole was actually too unstable to send either of them down there, so they had to walk the woman's husband through the process instead."

Yes. That totally counted as 'extra fun'.

"Now, you're probably thinking that the odds of you being faced with having to do a field amputation as a lay person are really slim, but this kind of thing happens way more often than you'd think." At least it did in her universe. "Any of you hear of the man who got his arm caught between boulders while on a remote hike, who cut his own arm off with a swiss army knife? Now that's what I call balls." She should maybe be less openly into a guy cutting off his own arm. But she was fourteen weeks into this class now and she hadn't even cared how she came off as a teacher when she'd started, so. "Anyway. Lucky you, you all get to learn how to properly amputate someone's limb today."

She then launched into a handwaved detailed explanation of how to perform a prehospital amputation, demonstrating on a simulated patient at the front of the classroom, and explaining things like how to work around the lack of cauteries or suction or replacement blood, and how much force you need if you're stuck using an actual swiss army knife to do it. When she was finished, she held up the successfully severed simulated hand and admired it with a smile. "There. See? Totally easy."

She hit a button, and simulated victims appeared around the room, trapped in a variety of places. "Your turn. First one to get your patient free and ready for an ambulance wins . . . something." She pulled out her wallet and flipped through it, then held up a five dollar bill. "Enough cash to buy yourself a cookie. Now: go!"

Comments

Re: Listen to the lecture

[always_someone]

Even Norman, who usually sat through this stuff with an air of interest occasionally mingled with faint bemusement, was kind of sitting wide-eyed through this one.

She was going to have them do what?