Day 5

Today was all lecture.

We were suposed to go over the entire body and it's systems, but we mostly focused on breathing. It was interesting to re-learn that what makes you breathe is not lack of oxygen, but hypercarbia - too much carbon dioxide. Really neat! He said that EMTs are "Breathing Gods and Goddesses". That's our main duty in life. Also driving and taking all the vitals *cringe*.

We went over a lot of pathophysiology. I'm pretty sure this is called inductive reasoning, but we start with the presentation, and work our way down to what causes it. Like today, I've never thought of this, but why is the skin cool and clammy sometimes? As soon as he asked, it was like: "DUH, sweat." But that just never occured before. It's clammy because it's damp and cool because that's what sweat does. Why does someone get in the tripod position? What might they be experiencing?

Later, we went over epinephrine, AKA: adrenaline. He asked us, what do you think would happen and why? Like, if we were going to a fight where we would die if we didn't win, what would happen? "Increased heart rate" was easy, but where does the blood go? Why is the heart rate increasing? Deep breathing. Why? Sweating. Why? Dilated pupils. Why?

Someone mistakenly said that the blood would go to the limbs. I guess I could see that, since you're using them to fight with, so they're important. But the teacher said: "No, you don't want them going there! Why is that?" Silence. So I stepped in: "Because you'd bleed to death if one of your limbs got chopped off."

That, and a detailed account of how exactly you breathe were the only major contributions I made today. Some of those kids knew how goosebumps and shivering actually warms you up. One kid knew some insane detail about the oxygen distribution of Mt. Everest and something relating to the sea level. Some chemistry nonsense. And even the annoying re-cert firefighter knew something interesting that the rest of us didn't actually know already!

It was awesome!

*Edit: The whole point of the day was that the body does what it needs to reach homeostasis.

Anyway, next time is MOVING AND LIFTING PATIENTS *dundunduuuun*. We'll see how that goes.