tragedy while on the hunt ( warning... a little graphic)

...used to hate it when they'd call to let my dad know they had a motorcyclist enroute to the emergency room.   Too many of 'em (especially the ones with head trauma) didn't make it......then he'd have to deal with his own frustration.  (guess that may be part of the reason why my brother became an emt and I didn't)

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Yeah, there's a certain feeling that can't be described when you can keep somebody alive who's not breathing when you get to them, or keep them from injuring themselves further from thrashing around by pinning them down and calming them with your voice.  For me, staying calm myself is the hardest part.  When I have a victim who is panicing, that's when I'm in my worst mindset.  Dead bodies don't bother me as much as people who I think are going to die, so I understand your mindset with the victim you worked on for an hour.  I've only had one extraction on a dead body that bothered me more than trying to keep somebody from dying, but we'll save that story for later.  For now, let me just thank you for being a caring person and trying to help.

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Well I'm not your regular sort of first responder or EMT, in fact I'm not an EMT at all.  They don't let me ride around in the ambulance.  I'm simply a wilderness first responder and swiftwater rescue technician.  They only call me if they need the rope skills.  Unfortunately more than half the time when I'm called in it involves a recovery instead of a rescue.

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Yeah, swiftwater rescue is the hardest.  It's very demanding and requires a lot of training and practice.  I have to go through a two week training course every two years to keep my certification up, and sometimes it makes me wonder if it's worth it.  Pulling a drowning victim out from underneath an undercut rock in the river makes me ill, but it's that one shivering kid that I can save out of a pinned canoe or raft or on the side of a rock somewhere that keeps me going back.

I've got more horror stories on river rescue stuff than you can imagine.  The wilderness response stuff usually involves making use of stuff you have in your kit and stuff lying around the ground, and if they aren't already dead when you get there you can usually stabilize them and get them out... but water rescue is a trick. 

Water is a much bigger force than you are, and the biggest thing they teach you in swiftwater rescue is that your life is more important than the victims life, because if you die then you won't be any good to the victim.  It's crazy training, and it's hard work, but I'm a river rat anyway, so I keep going back.  I've almost drowned myself a couple of times trying to help somebody else, and I've had some funny rescue incidents that worked out well and I'll laugh about the rest of my days.

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For sure, it's a lot of adrenaline... for both you and the victim sometimes.  I had to punch one victim in the head repeatedly until he went unconcious once because he was panicking so bad that he was dragging me down with him.  I just couldn't get him to calm down enough to realize what the situation was, and that he couldn't simply climb on top of me in order to survive, so I knocked him out and drug him to the bank.  He survived with a sore head and a black eye, and I survived with a few sore knuckles, but we both survived. Sometimes you have to hurt people to save them in those situations.  If I hadn't beat the fight out of him, he would have killed both of us.

They actually teach you submission techniques in swiftwater rescue courses, one of which is a swift punch to the face, which is harder to do than it might sound when you're swimming in whitewater.  In the training courses you always dread playing the victim, because you know you're gonna get punched a few times.

This guy took about ten punches, but I finally got him submissive enough to get him landed.

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