Last Sunday I had a double double shift, I had two shifts in a row and had to be in two places at the same time for the Red Cross. Volunteers are hard to find everywhere, but First Aid medics need to be present at larger events. So I split my time between the home and garden event and the Dutch Hip Hop championships. The home and garden event had me covering it for the past three days, starting thursday, with little (read: NO) real first aid need. Just a few plasters. It always gets me mixed feelings, of course I don't want to people to be injured, but I hate sitting and walking around all day with nothing (exciting) to do. It won't surprise you the Hip Hop got me out of that boring routine of handing out plasters and pointing people towards the toilets.
It started off with this adult performer who had got his finger between the door post and the door, very painful I'm sure, but he got it when we weren't there yet and someone else bandaged him. They just put a swab over it with some plaster holding it in place. Not real first aid work, so I got to do it better. The wound was looking good, the patch of skin seemed well attached to the finger and there was hardly any dirt to be seen. So I put some decent bandaging skills to work and off he went. The second big case was a distress call about a girl lying on the floor with vaginal bleeding. Red lights always go off when young children are involved and this was no exception. I was on my feet when one of my colleagues answered the phone; he sent an older female to help me, because this could involve the vulva of the young child. Fortunately, when we arrived, adults had already laid her down and apparently did some damage control using toilet paper. Clearly we were called much later, since the kid used the double railing of a stairs as a slide, which was located far from where she was now - and on a different floor. Immediately we had someone call an ambulance and by the looks of the kid she was not in serious trouble. She had her clothes on when we arrived and clearly wasn't gushing blood - so we just calmed her down as well as the stressed adults surrounding her. As the initial terror drew away her face got some colour back and she started talking more vividly. I left her with the adults whom I instructed to stay calm and keep talking to her until the paramedics took over. My female colleague remained, but also left when the paramedics arrived. It turned out the kid needed some stitches and was in no significant danger. But I never take risks when kids are involved.
On entering the shift for Hip Hop, I was sceptical. Hip Hop is one of the very few sorts of music I dislike passionately, but fortunately it turned out to be more about dancing than the dreadful music. Of course there still was some crappy music, but most dancing was to good tunes. I loved it, and had I known it was a dancing event, I would never have chosen to do the home & garden ordeal. I love dance performances, and some were really good, comparable to the LXD even. Of course the two teams I liked most didn't win, one got third place but I forgot their name, the below was my first choice actually, but they didn't make it to the top three who are to go to the USA for the world championship. The team which won was dreadful for all I cared, they won on previously earned respect and fame, I reckon.
This wasn't the real performance they did, it had some elements of the above in it. I couldn't find a video with the actual performance, so it's just a taste of what it was like.
In other news, I just returned from two days of educating young people about homosexuality in Emmen, which is an hour and a half from where I live in Groningen. My apartment is stuffed with first aid material for Scouting, so I'll spend some time soon to update the coffers which have been neglected for over three years. I passed the first theoretical exam for the SIGMA (disaster relief by the Red Cross) and am looking forward to the coming lessons which are finally turning to medical stuff (the most recent lessons was on human anatomy, which I loved). This bodes well for my future career as a nurse, I seem to like the medical field more than civil engineering. Humans are so much more interesting than tarmac or concrete or dykes (not lesbians)...
And I just wanted to mention that I have never felt as insulted in my life as when I read that a US ex-general said the Srebrenica mission failed because the Dutch military had openly gay men serving in the ranks. Utter nonsense, but it did hurt. Besides that, congratulations to all Americans, your president has done something useful. Let's hope there's going to be more of that in the coming months.
It started off with this adult performer who had got his finger between the door post and the door, very painful I'm sure, but he got it when we weren't there yet and someone else bandaged him. They just put a swab over it with some plaster holding it in place. Not real first aid work, so I got to do it better. The wound was looking good, the patch of skin seemed well attached to the finger and there was hardly any dirt to be seen. So I put some decent bandaging skills to work and off he went. The second big case was a distress call about a girl lying on the floor with vaginal bleeding. Red lights always go off when young children are involved and this was no exception. I was on my feet when one of my colleagues answered the phone; he sent an older female to help me, because this could involve the vulva of the young child. Fortunately, when we arrived, adults had already laid her down and apparently did some damage control using toilet paper. Clearly we were called much later, since the kid used the double railing of a stairs as a slide, which was located far from where she was now - and on a different floor. Immediately we had someone call an ambulance and by the looks of the kid she was not in serious trouble. She had her clothes on when we arrived and clearly wasn't gushing blood - so we just calmed her down as well as the stressed adults surrounding her. As the initial terror drew away her face got some colour back and she started talking more vividly. I left her with the adults whom I instructed to stay calm and keep talking to her until the paramedics took over. My female colleague remained, but also left when the paramedics arrived. It turned out the kid needed some stitches and was in no significant danger. But I never take risks when kids are involved.
On entering the shift for Hip Hop, I was sceptical. Hip Hop is one of the very few sorts of music I dislike passionately, but fortunately it turned out to be more about dancing than the dreadful music. Of course there still was some crappy music, but most dancing was to good tunes. I loved it, and had I known it was a dancing event, I would never have chosen to do the home & garden ordeal. I love dance performances, and some were really good, comparable to the LXD even. Of course the two teams I liked most didn't win, one got third place but I forgot their name, the below was my first choice actually, but they didn't make it to the top three who are to go to the USA for the world championship. The team which won was dreadful for all I cared, they won on previously earned respect and fame, I reckon.
This wasn't the real performance they did, it had some elements of the above in it. I couldn't find a video with the actual performance, so it's just a taste of what it was like.
In other news, I just returned from two days of educating young people about homosexuality in Emmen, which is an hour and a half from where I live in Groningen. My apartment is stuffed with first aid material for Scouting, so I'll spend some time soon to update the coffers which have been neglected for over three years. I passed the first theoretical exam for the SIGMA (disaster relief by the Red Cross) and am looking forward to the coming lessons which are finally turning to medical stuff (the most recent lessons was on human anatomy, which I loved). This bodes well for my future career as a nurse, I seem to like the medical field more than civil engineering. Humans are so much more interesting than tarmac or concrete or dykes (not lesbians)...
And I just wanted to mention that I have never felt as insulted in my life as when I read that a US ex-general said the Srebrenica mission failed because the Dutch military had openly gay men serving in the ranks. Utter nonsense, but it did hurt. Besides that, congratulations to all Americans, your president has done something useful. Let's hope there's going to be more of that in the coming months.
3 comments:
I had to do a google search to make sure the "plasters" (European term) you refer to are synonymous with "Band-Aids" (the west-of-Europe term) for those small adhesive bandages for treating small "boo-boos" :)
I'm sorry, yes: they are the small band-aids for treating small boo-boos.
That same sunday I had a little boy and his family come to the first aid station with a splinter in his finger. It was very small and lay under a patch of skin. I wasn't going to get it out without tearing open some the skin, it would hurt and he had only just calmed down. So I lay this issue with the parents, they said abort mission and I did. But as soon as we left the station the kid started crying again. So, I put a plaster/band-aid over the spot where the splinter was - the kid couldn't see it anymore and he now had this hideous brown plaster over it. About 25% of the 'work' we do is psychologic in nature.
not only was that comment insulting, it displays his ignorance of history - The Dutch have a great history of kicking butt and military might.
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