J- and I took CPR and First Aid today. I was surprised to know that he had never taken CPR before. I took it when I was a kid. I also had to take it a few years ago for my sports massage certification. Also a couple of years ago, I took a wilderness first aid class with Steve Donelan , which was far and beyond the best class on the topic that I have ever had (and really could ever imagine within 2 days).
Today, things went pretty well. My last experience with Adult CPR, First Aid with AED was absolutely terrible. The teacher seemed pretty charismatic at first and like it may actually be a reasonably entertaining day. It quickly devolved into him pretty much acting like a Nazi with a room full of kindergarteners (which we were clearly not). He would walk around with a trash can and look at every single one of us any time that we peeled a name tag off (we did this as a group, of course) or opened a plastic bag. He began shaming people if their trash didn’t make it into the trash or if they were doing something slightly wrong during chest compressions. Anytime anyone would ask him a remotely interesting question, he would say, “Oh, that is way more detail than you can understand,” or “It’s not on the test.”
Anyways, our teacher today was much nicer and laid back. He managed the class well and answered questions clearly. I really didn’t learn anything new, but a refresher is always good (especially since they actually do change the way that they recommend doing this stuff) and the more practice that I get, the more confident that I feel about actually doing it correctly.
My favorite part was doing the infant rescue breathing and CPR. It was really weird to pull the little infant dummy out of the bag. Unlike the adult dummies, it is the whole body of the infant. It actually looks pretty realistic, except instead of a face there is a big round plug where you attach a washable face. That was kind of shocking…this baby body with this alien-seeming face. Once I attached the “real” face (the plastic nose and mouth piece), I actually started developing some fondness for it. I noticed other people holding or rocking their little infant dummies, too. The class had about 13 people in it. Other than J-, a translator and the teacher, we were all women. I know that this will sound crazy to anyone that hasn’t experienced something like it before, but with that little infant dummy, I could really imagine having my own kid in my arms.
I also really enjoyed watching movies of different accident scenarios and watching the rescuers say “Call 911…” Fill in the blank with “he’s unconscious” or “he may have had a stroke” or “she is not breathing”. I think that tonight I will be dreaming about calling 911 over and over.
Really, though, next to the infant stuff, my favorite part was practicing bandaging. There is something about it that seems way more realistic than the CPR practice…maybe because I was actually working on a real person? There is also something about working with gauze and cloth and tying knots that made me feel very productive.
