Today, I made good on my promise. Upon arriving at the real destination (I had gone South instead of North...that's never a good thing), I was sent upstairs to a room where there were only old people. I figured I had been misguided until verbal orders began flying around the room directed at me. That was when I realized I had arrived. People love giving me instructions before I even open my mouth. Happens all the time. I had planned on paying for the course before the class started, but I guess they had a different idea. So, being the organizer of all things business, I pointed out the highlighted information about attending class mate, Mary Lewis, that glared up at us all. How one could over-look that, is beyond me. Oh well...all's well that ends well. And it ended well. I was sent back downstairs to pay the lady that sent me upstairs in the first place. They were busy this morning. I'll give them that one. And I got some great exercise going up and down two flights of stairs, twice.
Once the time to start had arrived and left, a young couple came in. Having a set of 4 year old twins at home and a baby that was due any day, they decided it would be a good thing to attend. I'm glad they were there. The room suddenly felt younger. About 15 minutes into the 4 hour class, another young couple arrived. They were totally new at being parents. This would be their first. It showed...
The very mature lady leading the group passed out Kleenex to everyone that had lipstick or lip gloss on. I was the first she handed it to. I said, "I don't need it. I have nothing on my lips." She insisted that I wipe my lipstick off. "Sorry. I don't need it." It's been said that a look (picture...but let's just go with this, okay?) is worth a thousand words. I felt she was about to kick me out of the class, and since I'd already paid, thought I'd better take the offering. I took the tissue and pretended to wipe. I'm getting weak in my old age. It's hard convincing older citizens that you are right and they are wrong, so I gave in.
I loved the mannequins we got to save. According to the Kleenex lady, they were harder to compress than the human frame, so if we could endure the time spent with them, we'd be okay if and when the real deal happened. It seemed fairly easy, so I think I'm good to go. However, if the heat in the room had been about 10 degrees lower, we possibly could have saved two of those mannequins; the ones that had their heads pop off during a rescue...and their chests blown out from forcefully blowing air in through their mouths that would blow a helium balloon up. That was really funny. Yeah...it was the two guys that did that. They wanted to make sure the patient got plenty of air. That may have been a wrong move...
All humor aside, my favorite part of the class were the instructions for saving an infant. One of the main things people don't realize is that you should never tip the infants head back like you would an adult. You will shut their airway off. There is also a right way, and a wrong way, as with everything under the sun, of dislodging something that may be in the infants throat, causing it to choke. Same with a pregnant lady. Can't really do a Heimlich on her. And there is a place (on infant & adults) that one must be very careful not to press down on when doing compression. I could list many things about this class that was so very important. You seriously need to attend one of these classes.
There's plenty of information on the internet about CPR, but nothing beats hands-on and having trained professionals walk you through it all. Simply amazing. Go to a CPR class!!!
This old dog continues to learn new tricks...here, in Mary's World.
