Patterns

For the past two weeks, I have been waking up an hour before breakfast and doing yoga with Addie. I do it because it feels right to stretch and use my body and feel my strength; and I do it because I have someone else to hold me accountable to a meeting time and an activity. This strikes me as similar to how I found the discipline to train for the Broad Street Run with Rebekah. Class is a combination of sitting behind desks in a classroom, practicing skills on the floor, and going outside for scenarios, no matter the weather. Whether real or as part of the scenario, hypothermia is a big concern during these scenarios, and sleeping bags and pads are the most important and consistent pieces of equipment that we bring with us to the scene.

I've enjoyed learning a lot of emergency assessment tools for injury and sickness. It seems however that the scope of practice of an EMT, especially in an urban setting, involves giving oxygen, dressing wounds, splinting, car extractions, and little else. These are useful tools and seemed to be used by many folks as a step towards more advanced medical training. The Wilderness portion of the training along with the Medical Person In Charge certification gives us more leeway in acting and using our skills and judgment. All the more reason I'm taking this course I suppose. Tonight a lot of folks are practicing skills like putting a bag valve on someone who is not breathing on their own, backboarding folks for spinal immobilization, stripping a traction splint on a broken femur, and making splints. We have our practical skills testing next week, where all this and more will be evaluated.

I find it wonderful and simultaneously difficult to live in such an intensive and insular community. It's so easy to let the outside world slip to the back of my brain, as there is plenty of stimulation from the class, the mountains and green, and the folks here. Yet that disconnect from a world and people I am attached to and love is unsettling and is ever present even with some dissociation. I realize it's natural and normal to miss the life I left while enjoying where I am at present. I am often hard on myself for feeling disappointed, vulnerable, emotional, only to be reminded by those who love me that I'm acting like a real human. So I am reminding myself this time, and hearing the voice of Sissypants Popek telling me such things.

Currently I'm listening to my roommate Clarice play guitar. It's nice.