April 27: CERT Vicitm

It was a terrible storm; the kind where lighting strikes trees and sets them on fire.  Poor me, trying to find refuge on my way to volunteer, saw a flaming branching flying towards me and I put my arms up to protect my face because, let’s get real, if that’s not the money maker, I don’t know what is.  Of course, I got these terrible burns on my right hand and let forearm and hand, the fingers on which had melted together.  For some reason though, the real pain was all along my right arm where the burn ends.  Eventually, some people in florescent vests and head gear found me and put me out with a bunch of other victims to be tended to by some frazzled looking teenage emergency response medics.  Being a victim is not all it’s cracked up to be.  It’s a tough job, and not just because of the pain. You have to constantly complain to get the attention of the health care workers at the scene, and that takes some serious persistence.  Luckily though, I’m well practiced in that respect.  After some exceptional moaning and nagging on my part, one of the medics finally came to me and she sucked.  I kept telling her where it hurt, but all she did was loosely wrap my burns and separate the fingers on my right hand so that they wouldn’t melt together.  I was later told by a more experienced medic that I had nerve burns and that that was the reason for my pain. 

On a more serious note, I actually learned a lot at the CERT training session.  The situation was way more hectic than anyone thought it would be.  I can only imagine how difficult it would be to deal with an actual emergency situation where the medics are far outnumbered by the victims and deciding who to tend to first is a nearly impossible task because it’s hard not to sympathize when every victim’s pain is real.  I think this experience may have helped me rule out emergency medicine as a career path because I don’t know if I’d be capable of being that detached in a situation so pressing.