Nobody Fear. I Am A Professional.

Relax, everyone! You will be relieved to know that Dan Marlow is now certified and trained in CPR and the use of AEDs (that’s Automatic External Defibrillators, to the lay folk). That’s right, you now have ANOTHER reason to invite me to your fondue parties and roller disco nights. For, should you go into full cardiac arrest or lodge a Lego Darth Vader in your throat until you pass out, I am fully qualified to cut your clothes off and push on your sternum and breathe live-giving air down your throat…at least until the real heroes arrive.

The training didn’t take as long as I thought it would. It was pretty interesting, actually. Especially that AED stuff. For those of you who don’t know an AED is an idiot-proof version of that machine that doctors run around with in E.R., yelling “CLEAR”, and shocking some poor dude’s chest. The instructor was telling us, when you hook someone up to an AED, you have to make sure that you remove as much jewelry as you can, just rip off their necklaces and watches, etc. Then he mentioned that you have to remove a woman’s bra because the underwire will give the woman majorly severe burns. Then I turned to Anita sitting next to me and said, “Oh, crap. I’m screwed. I’ve never been able to get those things off.”
“What? Bras?” she asked. “Couldn’t you just reach underneath her back and unclip it one-handed?
“Are you serious? I’d need to flip that poor woman over onto her front and use both hands just to get that beastly contraption off her!”

Then we learned about the Heimlich Maneuver. Which is a particularly awesome thing to practice on live partners, when you get paired up with someone you don’t know very well. First of all, you are supposed to position yourself behind the choking individual with one leg in between theirs (so if they pass out, they won’t just collapse on the ground). So, picture Dan, right? Pretty much spooning with Matt, reaching around trying to find his NAVEL so he grab and hold him closer. I think the instructors were cuddling with each other, because their demonstration was a lot longer than it needed to be.

But, the best part was definitely the CPR dummy training. For some reason, in our room, all the ‘male’ dummys were strewn about the floor, plastic chests exposed, rubberized parts lifting up at the edges. But, the ‘female’ dummys had zip-up hoodies from Old Navy on covering their plastic bosoms. I guess the junior high training class had just gone through. I just thought that was interesting. Anyway, I would like to finish tonight by reprinting here (with permission) a portion of the actual transcript of my training session:

Instructor: OK, CPR training people get up! Select a training dummy. Now what is the first thing that you do when you come across an injured person? Assess the situation, evaluate the scene! Is the scene safe to proceed?
Dan: No! Oh my God! There’s human torsos strewn everywhere! Oh, it’s horribly gruesome! I really don’t think CPR is going to help these people!