The one about the leg

Many moons ago, I was in Graduate School for chemistry. Yes, chemistry.

The building I was in was brand spanking new. So new in fact that things weren’t completed when they opened the building. We had a couple lab rooms with the other side of the building having different rooms like computer labs and a receiving office. The computer lab had to be passed en route to the bathroom. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would have even known it existed.

(I’m setting the stage as quickly as possible…bear with me).

The computer lab was having a ton of work done to it even while it was up and running. This was right around the time that wi-fi was starting to be set up, so I’m thinking it had something to do with that. Either way, there was a large hand truck that was also taking up residence in the hall way with very long L-shaped metal beams laying across it.

One day as I was coming out of the restroom, a young lady walked out of the computer lab right smack into the end of one of those L-shaped metal beams.

I’m sure you can only guess what happened from there. It split her leg right open on her shin bone. She yelled out. When I went back to check on her (my missed calling is nursing), thinking she just bruised it, I was a little ill-prepared. She didn’t speak English, so there was a lot of gesturing and attempted reassuring.

I got her to sit down and try to calm her breathing. Then, I ran to the restroom and got a bunch of paper towels to press on her wound. Again, this wasn’t the time of cell phones everywhere (I might have had one, but it didn’t work in the dungeon that was the lower level), so after getting her to apply pressure, I had to run to another office to get somebody to call campus police and have them send out the medics.

Once the medics arrived (and did everything wrong in the book-yes, I did report him), they got her settled and took her to get stitches. I never did see her again to see how bad it was, but it was definitely careless of people to leave large, sharp metal-edged beams exposed in the hallway right outside a door.

At large college campuses and office buildings, there should have been and needs to be first aid kits readily available. One shouldn’t have to attempt to stop the bleed with paper towels. Or have to run to their kitchen to get paper towels when tripping and falling while being chased by a dog.

SSI Guardian is trying to change that by making Bleeding Control Kits easy to purchase and make readily available both for public consumption in the form of Public Access Bleeding Control Stations. Life-threatening bleeding can occur at any time, whether as a result of everyday emergencies such as car crashes, via accidental injuries sustained during natural disasters.

North American Rescue’s Bleeding Control Kits and Public Access Bleeding Control Stations offered through SSI Guardian contain essential equipment that can be used by the general public to take immediate action in stopping life-threatening bleeding. The kits come in a variety of sizes and configurations, each designed for a specific venue, whether as an individual kit for the home or vehicle (like shown below), or a full-scale setup for a public setting like a school or shopping mall.

It’s not really something you think about until you have a situation where you wish you had a kit like this, kind of like the time I cut the end of my thumb off. That would have been a good time to have a Stop The Bleed home kit.

I carry a first aid kit in my diaper bag/ backpack whenever we are out and about, but it hadn’t dawned on me to keep something like this in the event of a more extreme need. Where would you keep a kit like this?