Still Don't Know What To Do With A Sick Lemon Though

I just spent 4 days intensively learning how to be a competent First Aider folks. Go me! I have a certificate, badge and a hideously garish green lanyard. Unpleasant accessories aside, I feel all virtuous and like a useful member of society now. I'm probably going to forget all that I have learned very quickly but I thought I should share a few of the most important/most surprising things I found out. Useful knowledge is a thing that should be shared after all :o)

In no particular order:

No 1.

Never, ever, ever try and pop a dislocated limb back into the socket. Despite what the movies and Mel Gibson tell you this is a really dangerous thing to do. You could trap nerves and do a lot more damage.

No 2.

The difference between somebody having a heart attack and somebody having an epileptic fit is vital to remember because epileptics can stop breathing for up to 25 seconds when a fit is coming on. Epileptics go rigid before a fit whereas somebody who has had a heart attack will still be floppy. You're supposed to check breathing for 10 seconds before initiating CPR usually so watch for this sign.

No 3.

CPR is bloody hard work. You really have to press down on the chest cavity for it to be effective. It has to go down by about 4-5cm (1.5 - 2 inches). Also don't give really deep rescue breaths because this could cause the casualty to vomit, which would make CPR even more unpleasant. The good news is that you can sing Nellie the Elephant or Marie's Wedding and that is equivalent to the 30 chest compressions needed between the 2 rescue breaths. That means if you panic and forget how to count you're ok as long as you can remember to stop when you get to '...trump trump trump.'

No 3.1

ALWAYS call for an ambulance before starting CPR, or get somebody else to do it, and tell the emergency services you have an unconscious casualty who is not breathing. You'll get bumped to the top of the queue then.

No 3.2

Remember to tell them exactly where you are as well!

No 4.

The little rhyme to help with treating shock and other circulatory problems: Lie the casualty down and....

If they're pale, raise the tail (feet. To help blood flow to the heart and lungs)
If they're red, raise the head (for the same reason just in a different direction)

No 5.

Somebody with a nosebleed should not hold their head back to stem the flow. This could cause blood to go down their throat and into their stomach and they could vomit. The stomach does not like blood (except in black pudding. Yum!) and rejects it. A person with a nosebleed should pinch the soft part of the nose together and be encouraged to sit down and lean forward for about 10 minutes to allow a clot to form. They can spit out any blood that goes into their mouth into a bowl or something. After this tell them NOT to pick or blow their nose for a while because it could dislodge the clot. If a severe nosebleed carries on for more than 10 minutes send them to hospital.

No 6.

Anyone who has the Heimlich or abdominal thrusts performed on them because of choking MUST go to hospital to be checked out. Those manoeuvres can cause a lot of internal injury so it's better to be safe than sorry. Oh, and Zoe tells me that people apparently vomit after having a Heimlich so have a bucket handy.

Hopefully I'll not have to use some of the more extreme things I've learned though. For example, I do not fancy having to bandage up a fractured collar bone because they're supposed to hurt like burgery and I'd worry I'd make things worse. I think if any little students have panic attacks in Freshers' week I'll be well able to cope though. Unfortunately the answer is not to slap them....

Ok, it's to remove them from the cause of the anxiety to somewhere quiet and private. Explain you thing they're having a panic attack and then get them to breathe into a paper bag or their cupped hands. This is because there's too much oxygen in their system and they need to get more CO2 in instead. Once they calm down tell them to seek medical help if it's their first one or give them a cup of tea and send them on their way. Job done.

So there we go. You can sleep slightly safer in each other's beds now knowing that I'm all trained up and ready to administer sticking plasters and triangular bandages in an instant, provided the first aid kit has such things in it....

Didn't Last Long...

Ok, so the not moaning did not last very long. I stumbled across something today that got me flexing the old rant muscles again...

PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I believe that's what it stands for and, to be fair, on the face of it they stand for a noble sentiment. I agree that animal welfare should not be sacrificed in the name of the almighty dollar, but mostly because well looked after beasties taste sooooo much better. The chicken I had at a make shift roadside greasy spoon in Mexico was some of the best godsdamn chicken I've tasted in quite a while. There was a suspicion that the family who ran the eaterie possibly kept the chickens themselves out the back, which would explain the great flavour. That all might not be true but I like to think it is so who are you to rain on my parade?

Anyway, back to the point - PETA in themselves are not noble in my opinion. They are terrible bitchy horrible people who seem to try and get their point across in the stupidest ways possible. If PETA were a person or persons they would be the group of popular and pretty girls in high school that band together and derive pleasure from ridiculing and torturing anyone they think deserves it (i.e. anyone who is not in their clique). Witness the above caricatures of the Olsen twins. Now, this pair are not my most favourite people on the face of the planet, more so after I ended up sitting through New York Minute because it was one of the only English language films I could find on Mexican television (Eugene Levy, what were you thinking? Mortgage payments I hope!). They seem to be just another pair of vacuous twits who have floated to the top of the scum pool that is Hollywood and the bizarre industry that incorporates celebrity gossip and paparazzi. I don't think they deserve to be so cruelly caricatured in such an immature and nasty way though.

So what got me going today? On my usual daily perusal of the celebrity gossip websites (I said it was bizarre and I didn't condemn it because that'd make me a hypocrite. Let's face it, humans have always been fascinated by what the idle rich are doing.) I found this

http://www.mollygood.com/peta-must-be-desperate-20080716/

Corey Feldman has jumped on the PETA bandwagon and seems to be trying to convince us to live on frozen veg. Corey Feldman? Oh puhleeease!

It didn't just stop there though.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=grill


I found the above blog through comments on the Mollygood post. It's a very interesting post/article... Well, it's a rant really but he spouts a lot of facts and figures to back it up. The email from PETA and his response to it are well worth checking out as well.

As I said, I'm all for treating the animals I eat well and I always buy free range and organic where possible but these PETA a-holes make me want to eat a bacon sandwich while wearing a fur coat and poking a battery chicken with a stick.

To end on a more positive note I did a Google image search for "Cutest kitten ever" and got some pretty keeeeeyoooot results. This one is the winner today though. Aaaaw! Look at its little paws and wee ears and big eyes. Aaaargh! The cuteness!

Cox! Get it? Sounds A Bit Like Bum...*

So, I didn't win the lottery. Boooo. No shiny new shoes for me.

This is a shame because I just found these. Dorothy (surprise surprise!) by Patrick Cox.

Now Patrick Cox is one of those shoe designers that gets mentioned in British fashion contexts so I thought it was about time I investigated. (Ok, so being mentioned amounts to once in Spaced and once in some chick lit I was reading. It was enough to make an impact though.)

I wasn't astoundingly impressed by what I saw on the website until I found these. Aren't they fun! £225 worth of fun in silver on poshu.co.uk or £260 in black on square.casobi.com (they have my size. Nnnggggg!) It looks like you might not be able to get the red ones for love nor money though. Shame!

Aaah, another pretty pair of shoes to dream about and aspire to. I'll have to make do with my £20 from New Look sequinned stand-ins meanwhile...

*Blackadder II in case you don't recognise it.

Oooh, Tuesday Shoes!

So, I seem to have been doing a lot of moaning recently - and not in a good way! It can't be good for my soul so I'm going to try being a little positive for a change.

Check out these shoes! They're by Robert Clergerie and they're called Marge. Ok so they spelled it wrong but it's a very pretty shoe to have named after you, or 'adorable sandle' as Zappos describe it.

At $464 a pop I doubt I'll be owning a pair of these beauties very soon but they look quite sensible enough to tromp about it and would probably do for smart or casual occasions. Maybe if I've won the lottery? I must go check my ticket....

Wait, What?

So, in my job I occasionally I get sent emails to send on to students. They are usually in regard to summer school courses, essay competitions, conferences, etc. You can imagine the sorts of things. Today I got this one forwarded to me for student interest which said this:

Online application is possible now for the M.A. International Relations Online, starting this October!

Um, what? The students I deal with are all here, at this university, doing either an MA in Politics or and MA in International Relations. Buh? There's a few that I'd like to encourage to go and study elsewhere but I don't think I'm really allowed to. Should I blithely send this on as suggested or should I take a step back and think about it for a few minutes? I tend to go with the latter option.

Oh, and while I'm having a bit of a rant (but a fairly quiet one) I spotted a packet of McVities reduced fat chocolate digestives in the supermarket today. Sheesh! I hate those products. Stop flipping kidding yourself and just don't eat biscuits! I guess some people like the reduced fat version of things like crisps and biscuits but I think you should just stop deluding yourself and try to learn to like the low fat alternatives. As a sporadic dieter for the best part of the last 16-odd years I've found that after a while it does actually work. Of course, something comes along and you get right back on the lard wagon eventually but you don't try to tell yourself that it's really ok to eat 6 bags of crisps because they're baked instead of fried. Plus, they usually taste like cardboard anyway which just adds to the misery and self-flagellation that being on that kind of diet engenders.

Sorry about the rant but that's been bugging me. Blogging is supposed to be cathartic, right?

Anyhoo, I'm off for a cup of tea and some proper chocolate biscuit action. Dipping carrot sticks in your cuppa just isn't the same!