The Nose Knows
(edit: Oops, I accidentally forgot to put the actual author in here. My bad.)
It all started with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I’d been in the gym and out of sight of my platoon sergeant, I wouldn’t have witnessed it. As it was, I was in line-of-sight when he needed to send people to Combat Life Saver class, intended to teach regular soldiers vital life-saving skills. It ends up being a chance to stab each other with needles and inflict large bruises without fear of UCMJ action.
I was sent to the class with several other soldiers from my company. One of these, was That Guy. Everyone has seen this person. They aren’t too bright, and yet they think they are. They’re the butt of the unit or the workplace teasing, and yet they still continue doing things that just keep them seeming to ask for it. This person was also my partner for the IV stick, a temporary case of insanity on my part.
After our first day of classroom training, we were going over medical implements that would be in our CLS bags. Amidst the saline bags and IV needles, we also had a Naso-Pharyngeal Airway, a tube intended to be put through the nose and down the throat of an unconscious casualty to help them breathe. After explaining it and how to use it, the E-4 medic teaching the class asked for a volunteer to try one while awake.
The moment she said it, I knew my partner, let’s call him PFC Nasal, would volunteer. Everybody else from our battalion seemed to as well. And he volunteered to try the NPA. So he was part on the demonstrator’s table up front of the classroom and the rest of the class gathered around. People broke out camera phones and gathered excitedly to watch Nasal take a NPA up the nose. The spectacle came of the same human impulse that led to the gladiatorial matches and Professional Wrestling.
With phones recording and discussion of putting the videos on YouTube or MySpace, the medic inserted the NPA while Nasal was still awake. After the NPA was pulled back out, more uncomfortable than going in according to Nasal, the class returned to the gratuitously gory pictures of injuries and I ended up with a story that was told all over Nasal and I’s platoon for quite a while. Pretty much until he left Korea, actually.
Shameless Plug Alert: For anyone interested in Sci-Fi, take a look at The Logs of the Sierra Nacho at http://dragongate.blog.com/ A sci-fi fiction blog in the style of the crew logs, with humor, action, and chunk bits of romance here and there.
Follow
April 20th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
so, i am active duty navy, but they now whore us out to the army to augment the army, and we go through all the army’s predeployment training- “roll over roll over roll over!!!”- including for some reason, quallifying all of us as CLS (even though for our particular mission, we wouldn’t even be permitted to leave the FOB and we were forced to live in the most defended area’s) so. and the NPA is probably the best part of that death by power point.
that or having a halfway retarded partner that freaked out at the idea of giving an IV, and miss, two very clear veins…
fond not so long ago memories…
captcha: isolates cheap. cheap what? i like cheap things, i do get military pay after all…
Reply
April 21st, 2009 at 6:33 am
I saw the same happen in my CLS class, though the guy getting the NPA had a chew in the whole time. Props to him for not throwing it up all over Doc, I still don’t know how he did it.
Reply
April 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am
At least he didn’t have to be intubated. Well, for his sake. Might have been fun for the rest of you. Metal thingie + tube + throat + conciousness = major panic attack + fun for everyone who doesn’t like you.
Reply
April 21st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
The first time I took CLS, was actually in Iraq. It was in this little classroom with bleachers. It was myself, another EOD tech, and all of these hard-charging Field Artillery guys. The whole time we were treated to jeers (good naturedly) about not being REAL men unless we were FA, etc. Mostly from their platoon sergeant, who was also in the class. The instructor started playing the one video showing an arterial bleed and using the coagulant powder on the pig. When they popped that artery and started the squirting, I shit you not, three guys passed out. And their illustrious platoon sergeant, who was sitting at the top of the bleachers so he could look out across the room and keep a handle on his “real men,” he was one of them. He actually rolled all the way down the bleachers and cracked his head on the cement floor at the bottom. It was interesting being in a CLS class and watching the medic actually do the stuff we had just learned.
p.s.: the NCO wasn’t hurt that bad, besides his pride. He just gashed his scalp and bled a lot, like most head wounds will.
Reply
Minty reply on April 21st, 2009 7:20 pm:
Ah, real men. What would women do without them?
Reply
Sicarius reply on April 21st, 2009 9:40 pm:
Be stuck with omega males like I. Who needs someone who cooks and cleans anyways :(
Reply
Minty reply on April 21st, 2009 9:57 pm:
And I thought men liked it when a woman was on top. . .
Captcha: “23 sorts.” What, only 23? I’ve seen a dirty deck of cards, and those pictures didn’t repeat.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:11 am
I went through CLS when preparing for my second deployment. Like myself, my partner had a twisted sense of humor. At the point we finally got to stick each other, we deliberately didn’t stop the flow. Luckily there was no one in there with a serious case of PTSD as two goober field grades were screaming, crying, waiting to die as blood squirted all over. Needless to say, we were not allowed to stick anyone or be stuck ourselves again.
Profuse bleeding isn’t always a bad thing! You can play in it! (And the man who talked me into going from enlisted to commissioned is rolling in his grave!)
Reply
April 24th, 2009 at 3:07 am
My last cls refresher class i did the medic stuck me.
when he was disconecting the iv blood shot out and hit him and the SMG behind him. I thought i was going to die that day i almost ran away but the SGM just laughed it off.
Reply
May 1st, 2009 at 11:52 am
No comment, but I really had to share the captcha:
bullet shopping. Something I imagine is the most important part of any soldier’s day. No offense intended, I have no end of respect for anyone who serves in the military.
Reply