I'm a professional rescuer!...Sort of.

So I had to drag my butt out of bed at 7am on a Saturday to go off to my professional rescuer class. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m sure I wasn’t imagining a warehouse that looked like it belonged in an old Columbian drug cartel movie. Boxes of who knows what stacked to the ceiling, dust covering everything, and only a lone 20 watt bulb to light the entire room. Well it wasn’t that bad, but our training room was a filthy warehouse. The Red Cross needs some serious funding.

The first thing on our agenda after an hour of videos was to practice removing soiled gloves without contaminating our hands. I was honestly surprised at how many people found this to be a daunting task. I wasted no time in getting them off. Although that was probably because the fake blood (ketchup) expired years ago and had turned brown while giving off an odor that would make formaldehyde a welcome scent. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we did this at the end, but instead we got to smell road kill for 7 hours.

I was wondering why they were only planning on spending 10 minutes on the AED until they brought it out. You would have to be a complete moron to ever screw it up. The pads are labeled with pictures and instructions in two languages. The device itself displays instructions on the tiny screen as well as shouts them at you. It won’t even charge unless it has a potential shockable rhythm (V-Tach/V-Fib). It is definitely an impressive little machine, even if it does looks like Hasbro made it.

Having them label the course “Professional Rescuer” imbues a sense of authority. It makes it sound special. Now as far as I can tell the only differences between the normal CPR class and the Professional Rescuer class is teaching how to take the pulse(yes the manual actually said that), move victims, and use breathing masks of various types - an excellent way to charge $25 more. I know I’m bitching about a trivial amount, but college students don’t have a lot of cash to begin with, and that’s like 6 days worth of food.

Anyways, after taking the class I feel confident that I could sustain a life long enough for some form of advanced care to come and take over if a life or death situation ever came up.

At least now the ball is rolling, even if this wasn’t a very big step.

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