From my years of practice I have discovered testosterone and alcohol are a failed combination. – TK
I think this quote is a great summary of our day. It was a day of many lectures imparting lots of wisdom, some student lectures and a little hands on demonstrations. Our day consisted of lectures about High Altitude illnesses, Cold injuries, Facial Trauma, a talk from a Chiropractor and ending with a lecture about orbital injuries.
We started with lectures about high altitude medicine and cold injuries but were unable to complete the cold injuries lecture. It will be completing it later and I am looking forward to it. After stopping, we had several student lectures learning about methods to start fires in the wilderness, wilderness improvisation and two wilderness survivor lectures (one of our classmates has been a Survivor contestant).
Some take away points from the morning lectures –
• Ambien and beer is a bad combination
• Fire is hard to start
• Too much coconut can act as a laxative
• Poke a bear in the eyes
• Cold, numb, loss of motor coordination, burning pain after rapid rewarming are signs of cold injury or a level of frostbite.
After lunch some Oral and Maxillary Facial Surgeons from UT Medical Center spoke to us about facial tram and allowed us to try our hand at making fillings and attaching replacement crowns using Intermediate Restorative Material (IRM). It is available from your local pharmacy in a premixed form from what I understand and looks very useful for long expeditions.
We ended the day with a lecture about orbital injuries (eyeball injuries) and the treatment in the field. It was a somewhat disgusting lecture given the trauma displayed in the pictures (one showed a nail sticking through the orbit). It was a long day. Tomorrow afternoon we have our “first” scenario so we’ll see what happens.
