A couple of un-ordinary days
Well, I gave the plumber until 5 minutes after 8 yesterday morning, and then had to bolt to get to my great First Aid Course by 8:30. I raced into the building all hot and sweaty and who should I meet waiting for the lift but Warwick de Jersey (the rector of St Matthias Church), and it turned out that we were doing the same course.
So I wasn’t so late, which was good. It was nice to see a familiar face and we sat up the back like rebels. But you’ll all be pleased to know that St Johns has a policy of girls working with girls and guys with guys, so I didn’t practice CPR or rolling people into the recovery position on him!
The morning went along fine and we all did a “great job” on our CPR assessments and everybody asked “a very good question”. We got a break to head for the nearest coffee mid-morning and then I found myself eating lunch with two girls who work for the Sydney Festival, and an interesting chap who did a spot of shopping on Oxford Street and bought himself some shoes, in a pink bag, then explained to us how he was going to alter them.
After lunch I just wasn’t feeling so fabulous, so during the afternoon tea break I thought I’d race down a level to find the vending machine and get a coke. All I could get out of it was Coke Zero, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind (I wanted sugar with my caffeine!). I opened it outside the course room, because you weren’t supposed to be in there with drinks, threw my head back for a sip (I have never enjoyed trying to drink out of cans!) and the first one started going down with that horrendous pain that sometimes happens when something goes wrong during swallowing (does anybody else ever get this?). I remember leaning on the wall to wait for the moment to pass, and then I woke up slumped at the bottom of the wall with coke all over me, and coke all over the floor and a squashed can nearby. Unbelievable. I mean, what sort of person faints in the middle of a first aid course?! My facebook status yesterday said "Alison Payne fainted in a pool of coke today. In the afternoon tea break of a first aid course. You wouldn't read about it". But you, dear readers, just did.
Warwick kindly hung about till I was back in my chair, while others mopped up the coke and made situational first-aid jokes, and I sat against the wall trying to comprehend it and feeling like a very big idiot. One girl came by and matter-of-factly gave me the name of what she thinks was my problem. She might be right, because of course I did the obligatory google search, and it adds up a few things, but what sort of person would faint in a first aid course then do a google medical self-diagnosis and blog it?
So that was a curious little episode in my day. I came home and ate a few handfuls of sultanas, and then went for a jog, so I think I shall live.
Today we had more complicated and grisly scenarios and did a lot more acting out and then the big theoretical assessment: 20 multiple choice questions. You'd have to be very inattentive not to get the required 80% in that test, but I guess I should wait for my results before I spout such things (and there were a few trick questions, really). All up it was a very instructive two days, and I met some really interesting people - today it was a woman who lives in community and teaches interactive drumming, a long haul flight attendant, a mother married to a fellow who runs a gourmet cheese business ...
You also realise that some seemingly obvious first aid ideas are a long way from helpful. I feel semi-ready to be of some use in the event of disaster now, so long as it's not a mangled person caught in a piece of machinery - somebody else can deal with that. I've just got to find out where the first aid kit actually is in my office.