Be Prepared

 

It happens. Sometimes, just when you least expect it. They don’t call them “accidents” without reason.

Just a little over 2 weeks ago, a colleague was out walking her dog. Nice evening. Weather was good. Nothing too ambitious.

Unfortunately, her dog suddenly went one way and her ankle went the other.  In a flash, she was lying on the ground with a badly broken ankle. She was alone and her dog didn’t understand what was going on.

Her training as an Athletic Trainer kicked in immediately. She knew her ankle was broken. She also knew that it was dislocated. The pain was bad but, with all that, she was still able to reach down and reduce the dislocation. In other words, she put the ankle back where it was supposed to be.

A couple of Good Samaritan strangers arrived maybe 10 minutes later, and, well, to make a long story short, she headed to the hospital where X-rays confirmed what she already knew.  

Later that evening, Orthopedic Surgeon Shane Asbury put plates and a whole bunch of screws in her ankle, holding it all together and setting the stage for a great recovery.

So, what would you do if faced with the same thing?  Would you be calm and know the proper steps to take? Maybe.

Maybe not. Several years ago, I had a patient who was a mountain biker and who had wrecked while riding alone.  He had badly broken his hip and could barely move. Unfortunately, he was in a bit of a remote area and his cell phone wouldn’t reach emergency services.

In what must have been an achingly long time, he crawled about thirty feet to where he was finally able to get a cell phone signal, so he called 911 for an ambulance. 

In most cases, that’s all you need to do—make the call and wait patiently until emergency responders arrive.  The only problem with that is that you might be hard to find.

This fellow was.  Stuck on the side of a mountain on a narrow trail, it took forever for those first responders to find him.

I was on a bike trip in Colorado a few years ago when one of the guys on the trip became severely dehydrated. There was no choice to it—we had to get him out of there.  Our only problem was that the nearest phone was 17 miles away and we were on bikes.

While a couple of us stayed with him, two more headed out to find a phone.  Fortunately, we were traveling by GPS coordinates and a back country rescue team found us easily.

So, here’s the advice for today. Ride, hike, swim—whatever—with a buddy. Know where you are. Carry your cell phone. There are phone apps that allow you to be traced. Have a plan. Anticipate the worst case scenario. 

Stay calm. Work the plan. Breathe. You’re going to be alright.