I’m here to blog about probably the most fun I’ve ever had in a Biomed activity. The South Alabama Mass Casualty Drill was absolutely insane. We had to prepare to be victims of a gas explosion from their concession stand. This meant beforehand we had to burn holes in our clothes, I brought an old white tee shirt and black sweatpants. My injuries were 3rd degree burns from my neck to my torso and I also had respiratory issues. While breathing the smoke in from all the clothes burning definitely isn’t healthy it was exciting and definitely an experience I would get only in the St. Luke’s Biomed Department. This year we tried something new by combining the moulage makeup with tattoos. This made the application of our injuries much more realistic and quicker.
After applying all the makeup, tattoos, and burns to everyone we were ready to go, and we looked straight out of a zombie apocalypse movie. Once we got on scene they told us to prepare for the big bang that would simulate the explosion. “How loud could it really be?” I thought, I quickly learned that hiring a fireworks specialist means they mean business. I’ve never heard an explosion go off but that was definitely the real deal, I think I even felt it shake the ground. Immediately after the explosion went off, moans, groans, and shouts echoed from every area of the simulation area, “Where’s my mommy?” “Can anyone help me find my husband?” “Helllpppp!!!” Admittedly it was a little hard to take it seriously at first and my favorite classmate Cammie and I started laughing, but we did shift to get into character. I couldn’t tell but I think I was the first person to be tagged and spine boarded. They did tag me correctly, but then the immediate responders, the people spine-boarding, were confused about whether or not I was deceased or not, and they also couldn’t figure out how to spine-board me. Eventually, when I was up in the air they realized they picked me up before any ambulances were available so they set me on the ground in the area that I think some other EMT students were trying to make the area for dead people. Then a lady running the drill asked me if I signed up to go in a helicopter, scared for my real life I said no. Eventually, my EMTs came back to put me in an ambulance, and I actually think I was the first person in an ambulance and also to arrive at the red tent.
The ambulance ride was all verbal, so they were verbally bagging me because I had breathing issues, and verbally cutting my clothes and placing burn ointments and liquids. During this ride I learned that emergency responders are allowed to google things, and just how much stuff is in an ambulance, especially in this mini ambulance. To track how much liquid I needed they simply followed a sheet of paper on the wall and then googled what sort of protocol they should follow for my third-degree burns. The only thing I’m confident they got wrong was my weight, they said I’m a 165-pound male. I’m 5’6 and weigh only 120 pounds so I’m sure that threw off their calculations somewhere, but in the case of third-degree burns I assume more is definitely better than less.
Now at the tent, I was handed off to two med school students, and these girls were so unserious but we definitely had fun together. They were also verbally bagging me while taking my vitals. When the radiologist came to try and do scans on they also couldn’t figure out how to pick me up and this led to this huge radiologist dude just picking me up and saying “I scan him,” and putting me back down, essentially curling me. As the other two began to use a stethoscope they started looking at me oddly, little did they know I was humming under my breath to show something was malfunctioning in the respiratory system, eventually they said stop for real because they were “scared for me in real life,” they also brought over their supervisor to check my breathing as well. She correctly deduced that my breathing was off because I used to have asthma when I was younger and also had just been sick a few days prior to the drill, but not before three other students also checked out my breathing. Without a doubt, this was one of the best times in Biomed.
Comments