After a 1.5 weeks in class, I found myself feeling that the knowledge I was gaining was just the tip of the iceberg in medical response. The scenarios we faced seemed to bring only more questions about what the expect, what to consider and how to treat different wilderness and urban trauma situations. Yet, it was in the midst of these scenarios that I discovered, the knowledge I was gaining was providing a solid foundation for me to assess and respond to any trauma situation, regardless of what it was.
On Tuesday, August 3rd, our class was broken into a team of 'patients' and 3 teams of responders. I was privileged to be selected as the Incident Commander for my response team and facilitated the assessment, extraction and care for a family who had gone rafting and had an accident on the river. Our patients were a mother and her two 20-something year-old children. One patient, half submerged in the water, was deaf and had a mid-femur fracture (the strongest bone in our bodies / the thigh bone), another, which our 
team had to pull from the river, had an open pnemothorax (basically a chest wound that was leaking oxygen into her chest cavity, placing pressure on her lungs and a ticking time bomb for lung collapse) and a diabetic woman in insulin shock with a chunk of wood lodged in her humurus (upper arm). All patients were positive for possible spinal injury and the team backboarded and carried each one up the river bank and to the road approximately 100 yards from the incident.
On Tuesday, August 3rd, our class was broken into a team of 'patients' and 3 teams of responders. I was privileged to be selected as the Incident Commander for my response team and facilitated the assessment, extraction and care for a family who had gone rafting and had an accident on the river. Our patients were a mother and her two 20-something year-old children. One patient, half submerged in the water, was deaf and had a mid-femur fracture (the strongest bone in our bodies / the thigh bone), another, which our 
team had to pull from the river, had an open pnemothorax (basically a chest wound that was leaking oxygen into her chest cavity, placing pressure on her lungs and a ticking time bomb for lung collapse) and a diabetic woman in insulin shock with a chunk of wood lodged in her humurus (upper arm). All patients were positive for possible spinal injury and the team backboarded and carried each one up the river bank and to the road approximately 100 yards from the incident.
I thought, this could happen to anyone along a river that some of my peers and I run along a few times a week. This family is just like any other family on Yosemite, that didn't anticipate an accident but were violently thrown into a time sensitive, trauma situation. When I run that river, I don't see anything the same way I used to..Within a 45-minute period the team had successfully triaged and extracted the family. It was a reality check to see 'patients'
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