| Mar 26th, 2008 at 4.25 pm |
Living in Skerries is very pleasant as I like to walk and the beach is lovely in the mornings if a bit nippy. It’s much nicer in the summer and we swim most days and go canoeing. I’ve been canoeing on and off for forty years and Peter (15) and (David (13) have been going out sporadically since there were ten. I’ve been using a sea kayak for the last few years myself.
Last summer I decided to have them trained properly in sea kayaking as they were getting more interested and the sea kayaks themselves are pricy to buy just on a whim. A neighbour, Sean Pierce had started a canoeing company Shearwater Kayaking www.shearwaterseakayaking.ie and was very experienced so the boys learned with him and had a most enjoyable week in Howth. As well as being an experienced canoeist and former chairman of the Irish Sea kayaking Association, Sean is also an experienced PE teacher and his passion for the sport comes through.
Coincidentally, later that summer Maria had a canoeist on one of our public Occupational First Aid course in Swords. Jim Kennedy did the three-day course and naturally had lots of questions related to canoeing.
About two weeks afterwards we had an email from Jim which I’m enclosing in full by permission.
“Now wait ‘til you hear what happened to me yesterday down in Wicklow.
We were kayaking on the Annamoe outside Laragh village yesterday evening when we came across a group of husband, wife and their friend (not kayakers) swimming and jumping into the river from a 20-foot cliff. After chatting to them for a while we passed on downstream just as the woman was sizing up the jump. I was at the back of our group about 100 metres below them and the rest of my group disappeared around the bend. Then I heard the guy screaming his head off so I knew something was wrong.
When I got off the river and ran back up, the husband was holding her in the water. She had hesitated and not jumped outwards far enough, hitting her head and wrist on a rock from a height of about 15 feet. By the time I got there she had gone unconscious and come back of her own accord. She was responsive in the water, so we got her onto a rock and I did the quick checks, did the “call the ambulance” routine to their friend and sent him off to find his phone. I got a history from the woman and her husband, took a pulse, did the head to toe check, cleaned out the gash on her head, sent the slightly-hysterical husband off to get her dry clothes, gave her a number to remember and all the rest.
I put a sling on the arm (I had no bandages and the head wound and possibility of her going unconscious again seemed more important), we got her into dry clothes somewhat, and I decided to move her off the rock, with the help of the husband and a passerby I’d drafted in. at this stage maybe 20 minutes had passed and my group had come back looking for me so now we had plenty of REC instructors She could walk, with assistance, but was getting seriously cold. I made the call to get her out of there, which involved getting across another stream-we put her into my kayak, and, with a group of people in the water for support, we floated her across and got her to the access point. At this point the ambulance guys showed up and I briefed them and handed over. As a precaution they put her on a back board and we all carried her out to the ambulance.
Afterwards, I asked the ambulance guy about the pros and cons of moving an injured person, and he backed up what you said-in ideal circumstances no, but in our scenario, with the patient able to walk and no spinal injury, in difficult location, go for it.
Essentially, after doing the occupational first-aid course, I was in the lucky position of having a routine drilled into my head and was able to go into it, point-by-point. The only thing different from the scenarios we had practiced was when she couldn’t remember the number we had given her. Some of the time she couldn’t remember being asked to remember anything. That was scary for me so I was thankful she never went unconscious again. In the end she had concussion, a fractured or broken wrist, early stage hypothermia, a gash above her eye, and a minor cut under her chin; but was generally OK.
Thanks again for the great course, I don’t know what I would have done if this had happened to me a month ago.”
Jim
Need I say anything more about the benefits of first aid training?
Roy Lalor |
