My mom and I attended a 3-hour CPR/AED certification training at the Kress tonight.
I had been wanting to get recertified before potential parenthood but was having trouble finding a class in the county that would work. Many were during the day or I was out of town. But just as we had decided to take an online course to at least get some basics, my mom brought the local paper over and pointed out a training happening right in Egg Harbor in the evening. It seems built for people like me who have 9-5s.
It was such a good training, too. The instructors were engaging and knowledgeable — I feel like I learned a lot about how emergencies work specifically in Door County (cell phone dead spots or ambulance response times when there are a ton of visitors in the summer holding up the roads, etc).
And it included instruction on adult, child, and infant CPR / AED / and Abdominal Thursts (formerly called the Heimlich Maneuver — his estate asked that it be formally renamed — also apparently Dr. Heimlich used to live in Door County).
We practiced on adult and infant dummies with helpful light indicators that let you know if you were going deep and fast enough Even though I was certified a decade ago, it’s still surprising to me how deep into the chest you need to go (over 2 inches for an adult). They tell you bones should probably break. You probably aren’t going hard enough and you can’t really go too hard. If only human bodies had helpful light indicators to let you know if you were getting it right.
One of the most important reminders and takeaways though was how important AEDs are for cardiac arrest. CPR is basically just buying time to keep oxygen and blood flowing, but without that shock to the heart, it really is borrowed time. They showed us an app that let us look us the nearest AEDs in the county (luckily my condo complex has one in every building).
I wish I could reteach the class to everyone because it was such valuable, potentially life-saving information. But I can encourage people to look up classes around them. The more of us who know this information the better.
With Love,
Natalie