fandomhigh | First Aid, Monday, Fifth Period

First Aid, Monday, Fifth Period

When the students arrived in the classroom assigned for First Aid, they would find Don leaning against the desk at the front of the room, his walking stick propped against the desk beside him. "Good afternoon, everyone," he said once it seemed like no one else was coming. "I'm Dr. Donald Blake, and this is First Aid. Now, in case you're wondering, I am an MD, not a PhD, but I'm not currently licensed to practice because I was a little...dead. Don't worry, I'm from New York: these things happen; we have procedures. But the wheels of bureaucracy turn slow, so...well, you know what they say about those who cannot do, right?

"So I can put faces to names, first let's go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves. Name, something interesting about you, and any first aid training you've had previously." If someone still thought humors were a thing, he wanted to know about it right now. Once that was done, he said, "Okay, now we're going to talk about triage.

"Sounds fancy, right? It's French, it's meant to sound fancy, but really it just means 'to sort.' You'll mostly encounter triage in situations where multiple people are injured, but it can also be helpful to keep in mind one-on-one when you're evaluating how badly someone is injured. There are five levels of triage, based on how urgent the patient's need for care is. Proper triage is important, because injuries can look scary but not be that serious--like a scalp wound, right? Anybody here ever seen somebody with a scalp wound? They bleed like hell, super dramatic, blood everywhere, but as long as it's just a scalp wound and not deeper head trauma, it's just superficial. They're probably not actually going to lose enough blood to need a transfusion. Throw some stitches in there and they're good to go. Alternately an injury can not look that serious and turn out to be a major thing, which is why you shouldn't stop paying attention to your patients after you've done initial triage, but that's not today's class.

"So the first thing you're going to evaluate is, are they dead? Technically anyone who's already dead is in the category of least concern, but that's not really true, because under certain circumstances you can fix dead, which moves those people into the area of highest concern. So you've got to look at what's happened. Is it a cardiac event, hypothermia, drowning? Have they only been clinically dead for a short amount of time? Then by all means, get in there with your CPR and your rescue breathing or your extremely controlled raising of body temperature. You gotta at least try. But know your priorities. If you're doing CPR on a guy who can maybe be saved for twenty minutes and that means another patient who definitely could have been saved bleeds out with no one to tend to them..." He trailed off and let them imagine the end to that sentence for themselves.

"The next thing to look at is, can they get up and walk? Anyone who can is automatically low urgency. They're what's called the 'walking wounded.' They may need medical treatment, but it can wait, possibly several hours if necessary. The next question is, why can't they walk? Do they have a broken ankle? That person can wait, too, but maybe not as long as the other guy. Do they have a serious injury, but the bleeding's stopped? Is it maybe a spinal injury? They go ahead of the guy with the broken ankle, so that's another level. The next level is people whose lives are in immediate danger. They're heavily bleeding, their airway or breathing is compromised, they're unconscious or unresponsive. Those are the people you treat first and everybody else can wait no matter how much they complain.

"This all sounds very serious, because it is, and when I'm talking about the levels in terms of, 'is someone's life in danger or not?' it maybe sounds like it won't ever apply to you. I hope that criteria won't. But there are a lot of times in normal life when it can apply. Say your two friends are real klutzes in the kitchen and one of them burns his hand at the same time the other one cuts hers. Who do you deal with first? Bleeding trumps not bleeding, so tell him to stick his hand under cold water while you wrap hers in a dish towel and try to get the bleeding stopped--and if she lost any parts of that finger, get 'em on ice and get her to the ER. If the bleeding won't stop: ER. Stitches. Now, if his burn is second- or third-degree, that's another story, but, y'know, use your common sense. I hope you have some.

"Now. Does anybody have any questions?"

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Medically?

There will be no humors in this class.

Humor, maybe yes.

You know how!

He's here if you have any questions or whatnot.

He will not be answering any questions in the vein of, 'Why has lightning struck Stark Tower twice since you moved in?' though.

Availability may be spotty as my dog is sick and I've got to take her to the vet once they open.

Eleanor Zarrin

Eleanor was writing quickly, taking a copious and intense amount of notes on the lecture. She was, after all, going to need all the help she could get, with something like this, especially considering how prone to ruining everything she was...

And she figured she should be used to it by now, really, being here, but she found it...oddly refreshing? That it was put out right in front that dead didn't necessarily mean dead...

"My name is Eleanor Zarrin," Eleanor offered with a bit of awkwardness and a bit of a nod, and then she hesitated, because you'd think by now she'd feel more comfortable admitting to the next part, but old habits died very hard sometimes. But she did offer a tentative, uncertain smile.

"And I come from a family of werewolves. So while I don't have much in the way of first aid training except if you count my grandmother's homeopathic recipes, you can see why I might find it useful to start picking some up."

Evan Buckley

Arden Finch

"I'm Buck," he said with a wave of his hand. "I'm one of the firefighters here. I have some medical training but it's always good to brush up on your skills."

Lucy MacLean

"Werewolves, huh?" Don repeated, jotting down 'werewolves' in his own notes. And also 'homeopathic remedies' with a few question marks. "That's kind of a new one for me," shockingly enough, "but I get the general idea. And yeah, first aid training is a good idea for anybody, but especially anybody who's going to be around very sharp, uh, family members."

"Lucy," she offered when it was her turn, waving. "Um, I'm from about two hundred and fifty years in the future, so I'm used to using some stuff it sounds like we don't have in this time?" If you had stimpaks lying around, triage usually wasn't necessary, so....

"But people still get hurt," she hastily added, "and I can always use more training on what to do in an emergency."

Because stimpaks were not, in fact, always lying around.

"Always good to get that continuing education in," Don agreed. That was why he was signed up for a class on 'Doctoring 101,' although after reading the course description he suspected it was going to be more of entertainment value than anything else. "Nice to meet you, Buck. I may tap you to assist in a demo or something at some point, is that okay?"

"Yeah, I would hope that medicine has advanced at least somewhat in the next two and a half centuries," Don agreed. "But you're here now, so it's important to learn how things work here, and it's possible that even back home you might find yourself in a situation where you don't have access to advanced solutions, so: good thinking, Lucy."

"Oh yeah, totally fine," he said with a wave of his hand. "I do demos for people at the firehouse sometimes."

Well, at the one in LA, anyway.

Nell Ingram

"I'm Nell Ingram," Nell said. "I grew up off the grid, so I'm pretty used to taking care of any minor injury that might come up. I also learned a lot about herbal healing from the mamas/"

Henry

"Henry." No last name, nor would there be any present on her paperwork. "I, uh. Used to have seizures pretty often. So I know what to do for those." That was both fairly harmless information as it was no longer true and vaguely relevant to the class, so she figured it worked out nicely as an interesting fact. "Other than that, though. Not a fucking clue. Which is why I'm here."

Don jotted down more homeopathic under future in his notes, then said, "Some herbal remedies are just good science. I'll try to incorporate some of that into the curriculum if I can."

Don was given to understand that a lack of surname wasn't unusual around here, so that was fine by him. "Do you still have seizures?" he asked. "Is that something I should be on the lookout for, and what should we do if you have one?"

“I do not,” Henry informed him. “It was a whole fucking misdiagnosis thing.”

What she actually had was teleportation, but the medical system didn’t have a way to diagnose or treat that. At least, not where she was from.

"Yep," Nell agreed. "Done a bit of studying on them." Which meant she'd actually done quite a lot.

"And I'm always interested in learning more - about all ways to help out if someone needs it."

Anakin Skywalker

"I'm Anakin Skywalker," Anakin said with a quick smile at Don, "the Dean of Students, which I'm also going to pretend is the interesting thing about me. I had basic field medic training when I was in a war many years ago, but I'm from a distant galaxy where the only thing we couldn't fix with bacta was amputations."

A problem that came up more often than you'd think, Don.

"And something seems to go wrong on this island at least twice a year, so I thought it was best to be prepared."

Arden was also hastily scrawling down notes, trying to keep the order right in for who got triaged first.

Except there didn't seem like there was a proper order, so much as an ever-changing 'if this, than' list.

"Yeah, unfortunately that does happen sometimes. Glad you were able to get it sorted out." Would he still be keeping half an eye on her for seizure-like activity out of an abundance of caution? Duh, he was a professional. But he wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.

"I don't know what bacta is," Don admitted as he wrote the word in his notes. It was a little close to 'bacteria' for his comfort, but probably it was in another language? "But I'm going to guess it's in short supply around here, so...yeah, probably a good idea to brush up on some things. Good to see you here, Dean Skywalker."

"I'm looking forward to learning," Anakin said. "I can see about getting you a bacta sample if you'd be interested?"

And then Don could shove that bacta sample at Tony, as one did. "That would be great! I'm always interested in learning more about...let's go with 'alternative options'?"

Nothing said a good time like being drenched in space goo while wearing your undies!

"Alternative options works," Anakin agreed, smiling. "Extra-dimensional medicine, maybe?"

"Let's go with that," Don agreed. "So what do you do when this...bacta stuff isn't available, or an option?"

Surely the answer wasn't, 'Shrug and go, 'I guess she's lost the will to live,'' was it?

Arden didn't want to cop to how long it took her to come up with something interesting about herself.

"Hi, I'm Arden Finch, I'm allergic to bronze, and I've got no experience with first aid at all, and I'd like to be capable of doing something more than just putting Band-Aids on people and hoping for the best."

No, that was interesting, medically speaking. "I've never heard of a bronze allergy before," Don said, looking thoughtful. "Bronze is an alloy, although I forget of what...copper, mostly, I think. Do you know if it's really one of the component metals you're allergic to, or just the combination?" Then he shook his head and said, "I don't expect anyone to come into contact with bronze in this class, but if it comes up we'll get you some PPE, okay?"

"Copper and tin," Arden said quietly. "And just the alloy, though brass can get uncomfortable, too. But copper by itself is fine."

She shrugged. "I think it's genetic, but I don't know for sure."

In that it was a bane for Elementals, which probably counted, right?

"Appreciate everything you guys do," Don told him, because...New Yorker.

They could do demos on how to handle a raccoon emergency here.

Interesting, but, "Allergies aren't my area of expertise, and obviously I can't practice right now anyway, so...I don't really know what to tell you there, other than I'll do my best not to trigger your allergy in this class, all right?"

"Well, hopefully you'll learn something new here, or at least refresh what you already know," Don told her.

Edited 2024-05-13 17:24 (UTC)

"i didn't think it would,"she assured him. "Just something interesting."

"Oh, I'm sure I will," Nell assured him.

Belle ~~did not forget she signed up for this how dare~~

Belle ~~belatedly oops~~ looked around the room and nodded to herself.

"I'm Belle." Another one without a surname!

"I traveled here originally via a portal made by a magic bean. And I've very little experience with first aid other than very simple wrapping of bandages."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

First Aid, Monday, Fifth Period

Sign In

Listen to the Lecture

Introduce Yourselves!

Talk to Don

OOC

Re: Sign In

Re: Listen to the Lecture

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Listen to the Lecture

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Introduce Yourselves!

Re: Sign In

Re: Introduce Yourselves!