Rescue Class or Hospital Taxi

During the past weekend I was extremely busy actually working 12-14 hours a day, most of it in the water, and then teaching classroom portions at night.  I managed to teach 3 different classes, Open Water, Rescue, and a CPR first aide class.  The Open Water class and CPR class went fine, but the Rescue class was the most eventful.

The first thing that was interesting about this rescue class, was that my student is from Sandy Springs, about 10 miles from Marietta my home town in the States.  He is also a professor at GA State, and his father works for IBM just like my Dad!  Small world to be teaching a dive class in the remote S. Pacific and your student was your neighbor in the states!

Now my student was a great, a fast learner, and attentive.  One of the local staff joined in and finished up his rescue also.  The problems came on Monday when we set out to do scenario practice.  Which is where we go out on the dive boat and I arrange for a bunch of "accidents" to happen, like missing divers, unconscious divers, panic divers etc...

The first unscheduled thing was when Craig the staff in the class, got a reverse block coming up, and thought he would not be able to dive for 1 year.  It is actually a minor thing but he was convinced he would miss out on his favorite thing, diving.  So my other student thought it was a planned accident and helped, and he did a good job, except for the language barrier.  After a few minutes I was able to convince Craig he would be able to dive in a week.

Next at lunch, I was walking in the shallows and got stung by something, it was like a really bad bee-sting.  Of course again my student starts to treat me, and I let them know to shut up and stop touching me.  I got over it and my foot went numb an hour later, and was able to finish the class.

The last thing that happened, was another staff on the boat had a minor cut from walking in the bush the day before.  Now for some reason it swelled to the size of a gulf ball after the second dive.  Needless to say on the way in we just stopped the boat by the hospital jetty and got some advice and pain meds then went home.  Nothing was serious just cuts and scraps, but added a bit of unscheduled excitement to the day.

Luke