Wilderness Emergency Responder Training

Ok, since one of my three readers has complained I'm not posting fast enough here is what is happening so far in Denver.

CISM, Critical Incident Stress Management: This one-day course was not an auspicious start to the two weeks of training. Eight hours of lecture about potential psychological issues for winter-overs at the Pole and what to look out for. Useful and mildly interesting but I became concerned this was going to be a very long two weeks until day two arrived with ...drumroll...

Wilderness First Responder Training! WOW! What a great course! After a few hours of interesting and humorous lecture we broke into small groups and moved outside for simulated incident scenarios. Some of us played victims (complete with fake blood and bruise make-up, a list of symptoms, behavior and complaints) while the others evaluated the situation and treated us on the spot. We learned how to complete head-to-toe evaluations, do chunk evaluations when time is of a premium, how to identify spinal injuries and immobilize the patient, to evaluate LOR (Level of Responsiveness), how to remove victims from awkward situations without causing additional harm, and how to give CPR. And this was just the first day!

The remaining days were spent learning and practicing things like how to stop arterial bleeding, splint broken bones, apply traction splints and SAM splints, what to ignore (because they are beyond first responder's abilities to treat), how to report correctly to a remote medical professional, and how to identify and treat hypothermia. Of course all was oriented toward doing this in sub-zero temperatures. We even had to wear mittens for some scenarios. Trust me, taping a patient's head to a backboard while wearing mittens is no easy task.

For three days the hotel parking lot looked like a small disaster area. Victims were laying in the parking lot, in ditches, over rocks and under trees with teams running back and forth. Face up, face down, curled up, conscious, unconscious, fake blood, occasional screams and combativeness. Not to mention practicing carrying victims in a litter across parking lots, up and down stairs and through halls and doorways. Once, after a scenario, I was loading a backboard and kit bag into an elevator when a guest asked me if there was an emergency in the hotel.

I'm going to give a plug for the instructor of this course, Mark Crawford of the Wilderness Medical Institute. Mark is the perfect trainer for this course having been a career Air Force SAR team member and combat parajumper. Every bit of theory in this course was backed up with real-life stories about situations he has experienced, including mistakes and successes. There were two EMT's in our group and they seemed in awe of Mark. If you need emergency responder training at any level, including for physicians, WMI are the people to call. http://www.nols.edu/wmi/

Now on to Firefighter Training which will start Friday. They say that is the really fun course. If it's any better than this I'm not leaving Denver.

Days to the Ice: 122

Emergency Response Training

138 Days to the Ice
Things are starting to move along. My pre-deployment emergency response training in Denver will start in 10 days and I have learned what its components will be:

Critical Incident Stress Management Training: 1 day
Trauma Team Training: 3 days
Fire Brigade Training: 5 days
OSHA Training: 1 day
Raytheon Orientation*: 2 days

*Raytheon Orientation is normally given immediately before deployment, so that part may be postponed until nearer my deployment date in February. Still, it's going to be a busy two weeks.

New Style

I'm changing my blog's style as you can see.  I don't think flower anthers really fit an Antarctica blog so I'm working on changing the header image. Be patient - it isn't a simple JPG sitting up there that I can switch.

[Update] Aha! Changed to a Pole panorama.

Live Cam at the Pole

RETURN OF LIVE PICTURES - The live web cam at the South Pole Station is operational again today after being off-line for the winter.  Above is a view taken 9 September.  I can’t believe that’s daylight so soon.  I’ll check with my Polie friend when satellite communication is available later today.  Note the line of flags that guides people to and from the main station year-round when ground level visibility is poor.  This photo is taken from an atmospheric research building in the Clean Air Sector (you can see the building as a tiny dot at the far left of the sidebar aerial photo). 

Current SP temperature -89F, wind at 10 mph. Wind chill -126F.

[Update] Haven't heard from the Pole yet but I think this really is daylight at the Pole! Sunrise is September 21, only 12 days away, so this is pre-dawn light coming from the Sun circling just below the horizon.  I bet there are a bunch of excited Polies right about now.

Outfitting an Expedition

THE ECONOMICS OF SHOPPING - Few of us do all our shopping in one huge super-market trip once a year, but that is exactly what has to happen when you spend a winter at the Pole.  Yes, meals are supplied, but only in the cafeteria, and as well-prepared as they might be it is still rather institutional.  For  example, cafeteria cheeses are probably that cheese-like orange stuff called “cheddar” that comes in extruded cubes or the stuff called Parmesan you shake out of a green container. As an American I was practically raised on all that but I also know there is better. Much better. 

So, the nicer things in life that make it all bearable are not supplied at the Pole - like really good tea and coffee.  Or skin moisturizer (required in the ultra-dry conditions), or really good chocolate.  As I have found out, eight and a half months of anything is a lot of stuff.  For example:

• A mere 1.5 oz of cheese a day is 24 lbs 0f cheese in eight and a half months! Since one 7 pound wheel of a medium quality Manchego cheese costs $125 that's over $450!
• One 1 ounce drink of single malt scotch  per day = 1.1 bottles per month.  Which is 9 times $60 (cheap scotch!) or $540.
• Heck, even one bag of Dorritos a week equals 34 bags of Dorritos,  $70!!!

And what else do I want to take for eight months? Espresso coffee ($150), Earl Grey tea ($150), good chocolate - two bars/week turns into 68 bars ($210), 8.5 months of skin moisturizers ($200), batteries ($200),  WOW!  This is like outfitting an EXPEDITION!

145 day to the Pole 

154 days to the Ice

THE PSYCHO TEST - I was trying to come up with some funny remarks about the psych evaluation - the test everyone has to take (and pass) before wintering in Antarctica, but I can’t do any better than Paolo Calisse, an Italian astronomer at the South Pole, who wrote about his own "Psycho Test" in 2002:

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10 Dec 2002 - by Paolo G. Calisse -

To get admitted to the tiny club of people wintering in Antarctica is a frightening adventure. Getting out of a crevasse? Fighting with killer seals? Tiring walks in the gale? No, nothing like that. After a long series of medical exams, including removal of most of your poor wisdom teeth, you have to pass the most frightening test. The so-called "Psycho". 

Some people included me have been submitted to the exam today, directly here at South Pole. At 7:30 we have been asked yesterday to meet in the upper galley, inside the dome. There were 6 other person with me. The test consists in the endless Minnesota test (567 questions), continue with another test called M2 or something like that (185 questions) and finish with the interview with the "psycho", that is my favourite because at last you have found someone happy to know also the most boring details of your life and for free.

The Minnesota test, in one of its multiple forms, consists of exactly 567 true/false questions. The declared aim of the test is to check if you lie, but I guess that it works just in this way: if you suddenly stand up, redden and start to scream the 10th time you have to reply to the question "Sometime I feel my head tender (true/false)", in one of his various form or to declare that "I would prefer to be a sport journalist than play wrestling or baseball (ture/false)" you are out of the game. In my case this endless test was even more boring because I couldn't get 1 by 10 times what the hell the question was meaning. As most of my most reader will know by now, I am not exactly the kind of person skilled for other languages.

But let me explain using a simple example what's happened. For example: question 65 asked to say if it's true or false that "Most of the time I feel blue". I taken my time to try to imagine a person that actually feels blue. I watched to the skin of my arm and tried to see it turning from beige to cyan and than blue. It didn't work. I never feel blue. But I couldn't really imagine such a person, wishing to spend a winter in Antarctica and contemporarely feeling blue. Why should someone feel blue? Why not green or black, for example? For politically correctness?

I continued for a good 2 hours to reply to questions like that. I have been asked if "Almost ever I feel a lump in my throat". If someone will send me an e-mail at this address telling me what the hell is a lump I'll be very glad. I checked false, and continue ahead. Anyway at question 566, just one before the end, something happenede. I found the following question: "When I am sad or blue, it is my work that suffer". Uh...oh! I got the feeling that I had just misunderstood the word in another 13 or 14 statements. 

But the worst was that only close to the end of this endless series of questions I realized that "hardly ever" doesn't mean "almost ALWAYS" as I was guessing, but "almost NEVER". This means that the portrait will come out of my test will probably be the one of a person that would like to kill his father each Christmas while getting upset for almost every reason, and, even worst, the kind of person that if Penelope Cruz would access his "cubicle" at midnight, would just starts chatting with her about submillimeter site testing. This doesn't mean that I will not be envolved in the winter at South Pole. First, as my boss said one time, you have to be completely crazy to wish to do that, second, if you could see the kind of people populating the station you could "hardly" believe that the psychologist has still not killed himself.  

Anyway, in this way I spent 3 hours of my poor time here addressing stupid or inchoerent questions. The second test included other 185 questions. After that I got to the interview with the psyco, that last a good half an hour longer than the other people because, you know, it is particularly nice to find someone interested in accurate description of any detail of your life. And for free! I enjoyed that poor guy with a discussion about arguments starting from the problem of emigration from South Italy after the WWII (the guy's father was coming from a tiny center in Calabria), to the production of amatorial movie with brodcast quality cameras. 

After that I got my lunch and get back to the AASTO, where I work. We had a long list of things-to-do. They span from maintance to the experiment, preparing crates, cleaning up, dismounting assorted stuff, replying to the mail, send diaries, to change the IP address of obsolete computers, find the allan key 7/64 (this could take several hours) in the tool box, depressurise stirling hanging from 28 to 4 bars using a pushbike tyre gauge, shoveling the snow, put a thermometer large like a tower-clock in a stick on the snow, convince a webcam to wear sunglasses, etc. Let me say that it's true that doing this kind of things in this place I never get blue.  Right? 

158 days to the Ice

THE LAST JUMP -  With my successful completion of the winter-over psych evaluation I have now been fully PQ'd for the winter 2010 posting at South Pole.  I was contacted by RPSC Medical yesterday to let me know I have been PQ'd.  No more jumps!

More Images...

As I begin to communicate with people at the Pole I am being sent great information about what to expect when working and living there next winter.  Here are some photos by current Pole resident Patrick Cullis:

South Pole Station in Moonlight

Photo by Patrick Cullis

South Pole, June 2009

Photo by Patrick Cullis. untitled

A Friend at the Pole

I just heard from the person currently performing my future job at the Pole, Laurie B. She sent this picture of my future home! It's nice to have a contact there to ask questions of and I'm sure she'll be very helpful. Just today she reported that there is a faint glow of sunlight on the horizon signaling the end of winter, although it is still very cold: -96F. Look at those stars - I can't wait to see them in person!

Next week I'm off to Denver for the dreaded psych evaluation, the last hurdle before PQ.

Photo by Patrick Cullis

In case everyone is wondering about the trapezoidal pictures, I am corrected the perspective.