How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [68]
Stabilizing an Injured Person
As always, the best treatment for an injury is not to be injured in the first place, but if someone in your group suffers a fall and twists an ankle or fractures a forearm, you will need to stabilize them to prevent further injury. Michelle, an EMT, submitted this piece:
You should always consult qualified medical advice on an injury that requires splinting, crutches, or any kind of assistance. In a post-TEOTWAWKI situation, that may be the medical person in your group, or Where There Is No Doctor, but unless you have a serious fracture that is apparent (i.e., bone sticking out of flesh, deformity, or immediate inability to move the extremity), you should make every effort to get help from a medical professional. Splinting in order to get to a facility is fine, but you really should have an injury looked at by a medical professional.
SPLINTING
We splint to immobilize an extremity. This is achieved by keeping the joints above and below the injury from moving. If it’s a knee, splint the injury so the ankle can’t move and the hip can move only in a forward-and-backward motion—so you can move the entire leg without bending the knee. For wrist or elbow sprains, bend the elbow ninety degrees and hold it to the chest. Apply the splint “in place”—before moving the patient. A critical assessment to make prior to and after splinting is to see if you can feel a pulse and whether the victim can feel sensation, as well as their degree of mobility. This allows you to loosen, tighten, or change the splint as needed if any of those three factors change during or after splinting.
Splinting is more about technique than the materials on hand. Anything hard and straight can be used—from tree branches and long wooden spoons to a piece of stiff plastic. You can also buy commercial splinting supplies. There are wire-mesh types, cardboard cutouts, and, of course, the simple ACE bandage. I also highly recommend taking a basic first-aid course that will help you with splinting and immobilizing.
For treatment of sprains and twists use the RICE acronym: Rest, Ice, Compress, and Elevate.
STRETCHERS AND BACKBOARDS
While stretchers are durable and rugged, they have some serious faults. A better option for prepared families is simply to buy a backboard and put the injured person on a cart or simply carry him or her. Backboards run about one hundred dollars, and the straps (spider straps) are about fifty dollars and are easy to use.
Backboards have slots at the top and sides for handling and you can easily secure the board via hooks, ropes, or seat belts to the top and rear of a garden cart. Boards can be made out of wood but are nowadays largely made out of plastic. Backboards should be used only to move a person and not to prevent any head or neck injury (their primary design in modern medicine), unless you are trained for that level of care. Another benefit of using a backboard is that by strapping a person down you are in effect temporarily splinting the arms and legs.
Another good idea is to secure all of your first-response medical gear to the board. For about 150 to 200 dollars and a cart used for other purposes, you have a heavy-duty stretcher to get an injured person back to your retreat.
In my experience as an EMT, I have discovered that some great places to find emergency gear are SaveLives .com and Galls.com.
Transportation for the Disabled in the Event of TEOTWAWKI
As you should know by now, I strongly suggest that if it is at all practicable you make arrangements to live with your family at your retreat year-round. If you have a disabled person in your party, the habitation should be a single-story structure, on level or nearly level ground, with an easy retrofit for a wheelchair ramp to the main door. Also, if anyone in your party currently uses an electric wheelchair, get an old-fashioned wheelchair for backup in