Monday we spent the morning learning about search an rescue from Jeff. He has been working on SAR in the Smoky Mountains for decades. In the afternoon it got hands on as we learned how to track someone in the backcountry, and how to utilize the "searcher cube" and created a giant search line through the woods.
0 Comments
And Sunday brings a day of rest. Some went hiking. Some did laundry. A nice relaxing day.
Saturday brought us out to Blue Heron for white water rafting. It was amazing! photos to come soon.
After rafting we chilled (and by chilled I mean warmed back up) at Hot Springs. Afterward many of us made the impromptu trip to Asheville, NC. Good food and good brews in that town. We ended up teaching our Danish friends how to play corn hole, and proceeded to get our butts kicked. Today we had lectures from Amy Bionditch a wilderness fellow from SUNY Upstate and a previous elective attendee, and Lauren Hansen, who is now an orthopedic surgeon in sports fellowship in Tahoe. We learned about animal bites and how to manage ortho emergencies in the wilderness.
We got off early due to a dentistry scheduling snafu and took ourselves out to Little River Trading Company. They are an outfitter, bike shop and bar all in one. Amazing! Good clearance sales this time of year as well. We followed with a stop at the nearby Mexican joint, El Jimador (an elective tradition) and concluded with a solid camp fire back at Wesley Woods. Looking forward to an early wake up tomorrow to leave for a day of white water rafting! Today we had some awesome lectures from Warren Fieldus and Lori Beatty, both Emergency docs from Halifax, Nova Scotia. That's Canada, eh! Highlights included how to assess and treat DKA, how to prepare for and manage diabetes in the wilderness. How to paralyze a bug for extrication from the ear, and how not to blow up your lungs when resurfacing from a dive.
The afernoon was warm and sunny and found us out in the woods getting taken on a fantasy tour through the team building challenge course. (Team Passhole FTW!) This was a time of laughter and good spirits while we battled giant spiders and ⏳time machines. You would never have thought it would be that hard to set a hula hoop on the ground. In the evening we got to spend time with a couple of national park rangers getting the low down on search and rescue operations in the smokies as well as all the best places to hike and camp (and 🎣fish) in the park. The temperature dropped rapidly while they got us hands on with their SAR rig. So warming up with more group calisthenics was a must. ~Casey Turner OMS-VI The 2015 elective is off to an amazing start. We have a great group of people from all over the U.S. as well as two from Australia and two from Denmark and several from Canada..
We are kind of obsessed with developing comradery. Below freezing temps and ❄️Snow flurries won't stop us from turning on the air conditioning in the cabin and doing group calisthenics. Last night we were about half the population of the local BWW to watch the defeat of the mighty Seahawks. Then tonight when the boss says, "Hey, so there's this brewery..." 14 of us all drive 45 mins to Pigeon Forge and insist on all sitting at the same table. We are already planning our return trip to visit Dolly World. I guess we are also learning about Wilderness Medicine. Today we learned what it takes to plan a trip to Mars, the dangers of the venemous 🍯honey🐝 bee, and we ran through the basics of scene assessment with our Wilderness First Responder Instructors. Looking forward to getting down and dirty with them in the weeks to come. Quote of the day: "We are gonna spill a lot of blood in the next few weeks" ~ Kirk -Casey Turner OMS-IV |
|