My own medical adventures on water
My first medical adventure entailed slamming the companion sliding top (forget the proper term) on my thumb resulting in a horrendous blood blister under my thumb nail. Anyone who has ever had a blood blister under a nail can tell you how painful they can be, and the pain doesn't go away for a long long time. The quickest way to alleviate the pain, unfortunately doesn't appeal to the victim at the time, as it did not to me at the time; but the best medical procedure is to drill or burn a hole in the nail to let the blood out. Once the blood letting is complete, the pain goes away. I was on a buddies boat at the time and his recommendation was to take a pen knife and spin the tip of the blade, drilling a hole into my nail. This didn't sound to great to me so I left it until I went to an emergency ward two days latter (with the pain still being pretty bad). When I got to the ER, the physician grabbed a paper clip, straightened it out, heated the tip to red glow, then burned a hole in the nail. So add a Bick lighter and a paper clip to your medical pack, you can use vise grips to hold the paper clip to burn a whole in the nail. My second adventure was when a couple I was sailing with at night, took a fix off of two lights as we entered a tricky harbour. Unbeknownest to me, the fix was made from the wrong two lights. We hit a rock and I flew forward and my head, above my eye, hit the traveller opening up a very nice cut. We pulled into a Royal Vancouver Yacht Club outpost (don't remember which one) and yelled doctor. Now at any RVYC slip, if you yell doctor about 1/3 of the heads will pop out. On this auspicious occasion, an individual came running with his "kit;" he turned out to be a dental surgeon. The kit was incredible and had every kind of suturing needles you could image with a variety of "threads." His first statement was "I always wanted to use this kit, your the first one!" - Oh goody, I thought on my part. He had everything except Novocaine (or whatever the contemporary equivalent is). Tip number two, if you are prepared to suture - bring the pain killer to numb the area. The last incident I was only witness to; however it was the most severe. It involved some one having their leg torn up with a propeller from an outboard motor; this was serious. Pressure dressings are cheap, make sure you have "too" many of them, not enough and you might regret it. And lastly, I know an amazing number of people sail without VHF. I did this about twenty years ago, no radio. I came to regret this when I pulled a chap out of the water suffering from very bad hypothermia. Now I have two VHF radio's with me; my stationary one has DSC (which you will want if you have to attend to CPR and need to get a quick and efficient Mayday out); and my portable VHF which I take with me when I am out on my dingy. Anyways cheers - a good topic.
