When There Is No Doctor

I finally got to watch most of the first episode of American Blackout this weekend. I’ve only managed to get one hour watched so far. Mostly I liked the first hour, I thought the range of situations was accurate.
I’m guessing it’s safe to assume most of y’all have watched it. You know that part where the young family piles into the car to take the expectant mom to the hospital? Yea, I was yelling at the computer at that part.

Listen folks, don’t be that family.

If the SHTF, hospitals are going to be inundated. Everything from burns as people not used to keeping tame flame try to use fire for light and fuel, to the trauma patients from riots/muggings/crashes. The last thing a hospital needs or wants is largely healthy families showing up for a routine delivery of a baby.

Stay home.   IF mama is healthy and baby is healthy, stay home. Cultivate a network of people living near you that could help, birth is a fairly common thing, and you may be surprised at how much local help you could have without making a trek to a probably over-run hospital.

This is true for simple burns and lacerations too.  This is where your preps come in. Keep enough supplies that you can handle anything less than a 3rd degree burn, or artery spurt. Trying to go to the hospital for a couple of stitches during a SHTF would only be an exercise in futility. But, you have to seriously be ready to handle that, and a 5.99 first aid kit from Walmart aint gonna cut it.  Maybe it would come close if you bought 5 or 6 of them, but then you have 6 of those poorly made boxes…. Nope, just make your own, there are all sorts of places to buy a basic bag and ala carte extras. Amazon even has good selection of individual items, if you can keep the individual shipping charges to a minimum. Our advertiser Camping Survival has some good looking kits. If you’re really going to handle injury at home, you have to think, can I handle a burn, even something in the 4-6″ range? Gauze wraps every day for a few days at least, if not longer, starts to make buys like this more practical. Can I handle nursing half the family through an influenza outbreak? And if you are worried about how much money you start to spend, think of it this way, how much would it cost to sit in a hospital and have a nurse prepare and change sterile gauze every day? How much would it cost to buy hospital aspirin and first aid ointment for a few days?

Of course, the other big requirement for safe home care is safe water. That means large quantities of potable stored water, or a way to filter/cleanse the available water. You don’t want to be scrambling for basic sanitation when someone needs help. You will need ways to clean bodies and bedding, so plan beyond heating-up-a-soup-can level of water boiling.

Knowledge helps, grab a copy of the Where There is No Doctor.

Of course, you could always bet that you’ll never need such extensive first aid supplies; considering you’re betting with your well being, I would bet wisely.

- Calamity Jane