Medical preparedness

Last week, in response to a Friday Roundup photo in which I was organizing our medical supplies, I received the following comment from reader Prepared Grammy:

I’m weak in the area of medical preps. I have the usual first aid stuff. I would even say I have advanced first aid supplies. However, I know I’m weak in more substantial medical supplies. Can you help? Where can I get antibiotics? (I have some fish mox. One member of my family is allergic to penicillin, and another is allergic to sulfa drugs.) Do you have IV fluids? Where can I get that? What kind(s) of medical instruments do you have? I have members who can use these things, but I need to get the supplies. I don’t discuss it with them since they don’t see the urgency to prep as I do. Any advice and information is appreciated. Thanks.

I didn’t want to post her comment until such time as I had a chance to do it justice. It’s certainly worth its own blog post.

First, let me say we’re probably just as weak in the area of medical preps as Prepared Grammy is, in large part due to our lack of medical training. Beyond standard first-aid classes, none of us have a background in medicine or any medical-related field. (As a side note, if anyone is wondering what field would be the most valuable in a grid-down situation, I would put medical skills high on the list. Just sayin’.) So here are a few thoughts on medical preps from a non-medical person.

I urge people to pull together three things, which once again echo the “three-legged stool” analogy of preparedness (supplies, skills/ knowledge, community):

Supplies
We have a fair bit of layman supplies, which includes things we’re likely to face on a farm or in a candlelit world. This includes the usual cadre of bandages, antibiotic ointments, burn treatments, etc. We have supplies of over-the-counter painkillers, as well as things for internal issues (bowel, urinary, menstrual, etc.). We also have Benadryl and sinus aids, spare reading glasses, toothbrushes, dental floss, etc. We have a pair of crutches (thrift store) and some immobilizing aids for broken bones (splints, etc.) (again, check thrift stores).

(Sorry for the wonky angle; I was trying to fit everything into the camera frame.)

We have a reasonably substantial supply of fishmox antibiotics (try this source). We’ve geared our purchases toward what we’re likely to experience, including Don’s extremely predictable annual sinus infections. A list of types of antibiotics and what they’re used for can be found here and here (there are other online sources; these are just the first two to catch my eye).

Additionally, we all got tetanus boosters last summer. This is really important, especially on a farm where sharp things are everywhere.

We have a fair smattering of medical reference books as well, including the classics for every prepper:

• Where There Is No Doctor
• Where There Is No Dentist

Overall good reference books:

• Mayo Clinic Guide To Self-Care: Answers for Everyday Health Problems
• Honest Medicine: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases

Normally I don't pay any attention to herbal medicine, since it's too often linked with magic-potion no-need-for-Western-medicine mumbo-jumbo. But of course, humans have used herbal remedies for thousands of years. The difficulty today is separating the useful from the "magic potion" nonsense. Nurse Amy, one-half of the team which operates the phenomenal Doom and Bloom website, recommends the following two guides for sensible, no-nonsense herbal medicines:

• Prescription for Herbal Healing: An Easy-to-Use A-to-Z Reference to Hundreds of Common Disorders and Their Herbal Remedies
• The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook

The following book was written by our neighbor Enola Gay. She researched the topics exhaustively and had the material reviewed by a physician. An excellent gem for anyone's prepper library:

• The Prepared Family Guide to Uncommon Diseases

And this is a small old-fashioned home-remedy book Enola recommends. It was written in 1958 so it's dated, but sometimes looking back to (as the title suggests) traditional folk remedies can be useful:

• Folk Medicine: A New England Almanac of Natural Health Care From a Noted Vermont Country Doctor

But one thing to remember: no amount of literature on folk remedies or herbal medicines will substitute for modern medical knowledge. If you need your appendix out, you need your appendix out.

Skills/Knowledge
Medical skills and knowledge constitute our biggest gap in medical preparedness. We’re looking into attending a wilderness medical course. This would be pricey if we do it alone, but we might bring an instructor to our community to teach a course, with the costs shared among all attendees.

Sometimes it’s best to know our limitations. We don’t have the training to administer IV fluids, for example. This is something you really, really don’t want to mess up since it requires special training and equipment we don’t have (and can cause unspeakable harm if done incorrectly). Ergo, we don’t keep supplies for this.

Community
We have some people in our area with more advanced medical training (EMT/paramedic), and the wilderness medical training would boost the skills and knowledge among the whole community. We’re also members of LifeFlight, very important if you’re an hour away from a hospital (though admittedly useless in a grid-down situation).

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This is about all we’ve done as far as medical preps. One thing is worth pointing out: We live a fairly vigorous rural homesteading lifestyle, but it’s a lifestyle we would never have entered into (or continued doing) unless we were in good health. Although we’ve required medical care for a variety of issues over the years – who hasn’t? – we don’t have any special ongoing medical needs. Clearly this can change in a moment, but for the time being we’re doing okay.

For those with health issues, they will need to prepare as best they can within their abilities and requirements.

But here’s the thing: We can’t prepare for it all. Some things can only be treated in a hospital setting with modern medicine and skilled doctors. If we face a medical emergency when those options aren’t available, then our best medicine is found in John 3:16.

Make sure your tetanus booster is up-to-date

I was climbing over a stack of wood yesterday when I brought my full weight down on a board with three nails on it.

It's a sick sensation to feel nails punch through the sneaker and into one's foot. Three of them made me feel queasy for a moment and I had to sit down, even though there wasn't much actual pain from the punctures because the nails were so thin and sharp.

Here's my (dirty) sock, showing the small blood marks from the puncture. Not much to see, is there? There wasn't much to clean on my foot, either.

I limped for a few hours, but except for a bit of soreness today, my foot feels fine.

However the first thing I did was to call our local medical clinic and speak to their Records Department to see when my last tetanus shot was. My last shot was in 2008, so I'm good for another five years. (Tetanus boosters should be given every ten years.)

Tetanus, as you doubtless all know, is a neurotoxin that incubates under anaerobic conditions, such as deep puncture wounds. The common term is lockjaw, because muscular spams of the jaw are some of the first symptoms. The condition causes prolonged and agonizing muscle spams. For unvaccinated people, the mortality rate can be very high (50 to 70%).

Painting by Sir Charles Bell, 1809 - Patient Suffering from Tetanus

In short, tetanus is no joke. And on a farm, there are endless opportunities for puncture wounds -- wire, nails, tools, horns, you name it. The fact that we can get a shot once a decade to protect us from such horrors is nothing short of a modern miracle.

I urge everyone to make sure your tetanus booster is up to date. You never know when you'll step on a board with three nails.