First Aid #4
Random Guy: “Hey, I got a question for ya. What about my pills? My mother takes pills, I take pills, my brother takes pills, and if we don’t have our pills we can get in trouble really fast. Have seizure, have anxiety attacks. What do we do about the fact that if an emergency happens, I mean depending on the emergency, could be a hurricane, could be flooding, it could be anything. What do we do about our pills? How bout that?”
David: “Well hey, that’s a pretty good question. I thought we would talk about pills this week. The standard idea is far as pills that you need to stay alive and in case there is an emergency is any where between thirty and ninety days. It would be a good idea to go ahead and get with your doctor and see if you can get an extra supply of the pills that you need to stay alive. If you can, get ninety days. Ninety days is a good thing to have. If you can’t, minimize. Try and get yourself 30 days. As far as regular pills, stuff that is not life threatening, just stock up on things you think is necessary. Pain reliever pills, medicine, the daily every day stuff that you want to deal with but as far as your life and death pills, what you need to survive. Thirty days to ninety days. That is what I would recommend.”
RandomGuy: “Hey I got another part to my question. What about first aid for my house hold? I got quite a few members in my family that are different types of people and I need to know what kind of first aid or first responder materials that I should have in my house. There are so many things to buy and so many things you can get. I really don’t have much money. So what do you got to say to that?”
David: “Well I think I got a lot of things to say about that. Now as far as first aid and the first aid materials in your house hold I think the first thing you should start with is a basic first aid kit. There are hundreds of thousands of first aid kits out there. I would get whatever you can afford. For me, I can afford a ten or fifteen dollar kit. It has the basic stuff, bandages, cold suppressants and the one thing that I really like is these little cleaning toilette’s, sting relief pads and of course iodine prep pads. Now these things are great to have in your first aid kit. Also if you don’t use them all, take them out and put them in your go bag or put them in your prep bag and your Bug out Bag. They are really light and their really awesome. But these things will have the basic q-tips and every day stuff. Now obviously a first aid kit is just that, a first aid kit. Now depending on how much money you can spend on it, you’re not going to have everything you need. Now in my house hold I’ve got a lot of old people. I’ve got a young person who is autistic. I have somebody who doesn’t walk around very much, lol none of us walk around very much and I am partially disabled. So for us, we bump into things, we hit things, we get scratches and my mother also kind of has a little bit of blood thinner.
She takes a lot of pills that make her blood thin so I have to worry about her bleeding a lot. Even with a basic scratch. Now what do you do”
“What is the most important thing you wanna be afraid of? That would be infection. Okay. You need to make sure that you have some products or some materials that will protect you against infection. The first thing Ive got here is called dermoplast. It is a pain relieving, antibacterial spray. There is quite a few of them. I like this one because it has two active ingredients along with the Benzocaine which is a topical Analgesic. And a first aid antiseptic so it has two active ingredients instead of just your basic one. And this is something that I think is quite important that any of the scratches, any of the problems that you’re having when you’re bumping and knocking and getting cuts. You can sterilize”
“The other thing I have is a full bottle of iodine. Now Iodine is, we learned in the military is very good. Plus you have the little iodine packets in here. They are very great for stopping any anti bacterial stuff on your skin, around your bites or cuts. You can clean with them, you can take a pad to wipe it off. Any way to make a more sterilized surface in case you had to lets say get serious and do cutting or whatever. I’m not gonna get into that. That’s for another show.”
RandomGuy: “What about Neosporin?”
David: Yes. Neosporin is a good thing to have. In fact neosporin cream is something our parents have all the time. I know my mother did and I am sure that person who yelled that out, his mother did to. Now in moving on, after you have sterilized your wound and protected yourself from infection how do you keep that wound or that problem from getting reinfected? We constantly move around and constantly go outside and we’re gonna get dirty. So we gotta protect those wounds. My big thing is that I like to have a LOT of bandages. I have surgical bandages from Walgreens. I have other surgical dressing because they are sterilized. I also have gauze sponges that you can get from first choice medical supplies. You can use these to clean the wounds around the area. Get the main stuff off before you do the iodine. You can also use these little gauze pads that I have here to use here to spread the iodine on that. Also, after this is done you then put there onto the pad and make sure you make sure to cover it. I have conforming gauze bandages that you can wrap around the area that you put on such as your sponge. You need to wrap it around using your different tapes okay. Then you have, I even have the large ones so I can have it around my legs or my torso. If I get a cut here and there I can protect it. Now these things are really good in case you have something that leaks. Lets put it that way. My mother gets these little scratches that actually has water that comes out of her legs due to lack of circulation. So I’ve got these gauze so I can wipe it up.
You can use the iodine to sterilize the area and then you can wrap it up around the sponge on the conforming bandage. The final thing that I like to do is use this stretching conforming wraps. It’s really good. You’ve seen probably a lot of nurses if you ever deal with any nurses. What it does is it actually attaches itself TO itself. You wrap it around and it likes to stick to itself really well. So there it is. It doesn’t come off it sticks to itself really well. I would suggest getting a couple of these because in case of an accident or injury you’re probably going to have to change your bandage several times a day or maybe every other day. so make sure you have a large supply of bandages. Sterile bandages, gauze’s, conforming gauze’s which are also from first choice. These are things I’ve got from Walgreens and Walmart. They have lots of dressings. Make sure you get enough of these dressings and gauze’s and everything to keep your supply at least 15 to 30 days. I mean we are not talking about major incident, but you want to make sure you don’t use your supply up with every day use and now you don’t have any left for an emergency. I mean like for these two items your big spray is easy to use for your emergency items and I would suggest using your pouches for your every day use.”
“Now there is one more thing that I personally do not have that I want to get. That is a new product that is out there and it is a blood clotting device. Lets say, just once, most people don’t have it happen to them of getting a really deep cut or something that could possible kill them if they don’t get it fixed. But there were times in the military where we had to do a pressure dressing and then we had to do a second pressure dressing. Then sometimes if the red blood wouldn’t stop flowing we would have to put a tourniquet on it which is the possibility of losing your entire arm because now you’ve gotten all sort of complications. There is a product new out there called quick seal. I learned about it by just going on the web looking threw different products that I wanted to have for my first aid kit. Quick Clot is literally a sponge, a mesh thing that goes onto the cut. Even if your cut is really, really, really deep it has a clotting agent in it that will literally save your life. If you get a deep cut, that one chance in a hundred that you’re gonna be cut and the ambulance isn’t coming. Even if your not in a serious world ending event where you have to deal with your own life and death situation, what if you just have to keep yourself from bleeding to death before the ambulance comes. I think every household should have a quick clot product. A blood stop or something that clots the blood really quickly. And quick clot is a product that I actually like. I endorse it, I believe in it. They have one at Walmart now where you can get 2 pads for less than twenty bucks so I intend to go ahead and get this quick clot to kind of round a bout my first aid kit that is designed for my family. It is designed for keeping us sterile and safe. There is always room for something else, but for now this is just a basic in home kit that I would like for you to think about and try to get at least some of the basics that will work for you and help your family out from the situations that you get in and are related to you.”