Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

Sometimes the coolest things you learn at Wilderness First Responder class are from the stories the other students tell during breaks.

One woman spent some time working at the South Pole, and someone asked her what the coldest temp was there. She said it got down to minus 102 degrees (ambient) (meaning–I had to check–the actual temp without wind chill factored in). And then, of course, they all did the 300 Club.

“The huh?”

“Yeah, as soon as the temp gets below minus 100, we all take off our clothes–except for tennis shoes–and go stand in a sauna heated to 200 degrees. We stay in there as long as we can possibly take it, then open the door and run outside and do a big loop around the actual South Pole. I’m pretty modest, so I wasn’t keen on the naked part, but I figured I couldn’t pass up the experience. But later I realized it was okay, because someone video taped it, and all you can see is these big blogs of steam running out the door into the snow. You can’t even see that there are bodies underneath that.”

“That must be a little shock to the heart,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s kind of rough for some people. We had this one guy–really overweight–and about ten steps into it he just froze there–couldn’t move another muscle. We had to run back out to him with blankets and rewarm him so we could get him inside.”

Now isn’t that story worth me taking this recert course?

So I was thinking about it on the walk home from class, and it suddenly dawned on me that that’s what the opening scene of the Disney movie Eight Below is all about. (And let me stop you right there: I love that movie, so watch yourselves. It’s about dogs, right? Okay, then.) I had no clue what that guy was doing at the beginning of the movie, and now I get it. Um, Disney? Maybe you could have explained that a little better. Or is it just that everyone but me knew about this ritual?

Anyway, the class was great fun today–all of us taking turns lying out in the cold, pretending to have horrible head injuries or hypovolemic shock or other entertaining problems, while those of us on rescue teams tried to figure out everything that was wrong so we could treat it. My favorite was the one where the guy had taken a biff off the top of his snowmobile, and was so excited about how far he had flown. Of course, he was a little drunk (excuse me–saying a patient is “drunk” is making a judgment. All we can say is alcohol was consumed, starting at breakfast), so the fact that he might have injured his spine was of little consequence compared to how much air he’d seen.

We ended the day talking about amputations, and how we have two patients then: big patient, who’s running around screaming and bleeding, and little patient, who’s just lying there not bleeding at all anymore because it’s disconnected from the blood supply. We talked about how to store a severed finger (you want to keep it dry, but cool. Clean it off, triple-bag it in Ziplocs, then stick it in a Nalgene bottle full of cold water. Whose Nalgene bottle? The patient’s, not yours. And keep in mind that you never want to freeze a severed part, since that kills all the tissues. Dry and cold–remember that).

I guess this is as good a time as any to ask: Do you actually want these details? Or am I thoroughly grossing you out?

Technorati Tags: Wilderness First Responder, Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness Medicine, 300 Club, South Pole, Eight Below

Posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 pm under Life . Subscribe to responses: RSS 2.0 Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.