Reversals

When I was a Patrol Leader in Troop 703, our first aid kit contained a little vacuum syringe designed to suck venom out of a snake bite wound. We were told to use our Official Boy Scout Pocketknives to cut little "X" marks on each puncture so that the poisoned blood could be easily siphoned.

That's not the way it's done today.

Yesterday, I attended a CPR/First Aid certification class provided by my employers at Foothills Park and Rec. It was an excellent class that covered a broad range of responses for possible emergencies we might encounter at some point. And apparently, rattlesnake bites are not unheard of within the district -- though they are much more likely to be a problem for golfers than they are for Masters Swimmers.

In any case, the recommended treatment is to keep the bite wound lower than the heart and call 911. That's it. No leeches, no bloodletting, no chanting to wooden Tiki idols to plead for removal of the Greg Brady curse. Just stay calm and relaxed, and think about how you'll retell the incident in terms that make you sound like the heroic reincarnation of the Crocodile Hunter, instead of a careless lout who didn't watch where he was stepping.

Oh, and by the way, you don't put butter on burns, tie a tourniquet about an amputation, or chug Syrup of Ipecac if you ingest iocane with first building up an immunity. And the CPR ratio of compressions to ventilations is now 30:2 instead of the 5:2 standard I was taught back in the day. (The Heimlich maneuver is still good, though.)

And things have changed in swimming, too. We used to be taught that the object of a racing start was to fly as far as you can and land on the water as flat as possible. Now we know that it's faster to cut into the water earlier, go a bit deeper, and avoid the drag of the water's surface tension. And if that's not enough, the latest research seems to show that a straight-arm pull is more effective than the "S-Stroke" I was taught, and that long-axis rotation shouldn't be as extreme as we had been told for the last several decades.

I doubt that we'll ever go back to the bellybuster start technique. But it wouldn't surprise me to see some other research suggest a double-S pull, or even a corkscrew roll. Who knows? But isn't that part of what makes life so interesting? New data results in new standards. We learn, we adapt, and we become more effective. That's pretty cool.

But I do wonder how many erroneous techniques are still being passed along by people who haven't had updated training? Do parents still tell their kids to wait an hour after eating before swimming? (I knew that one was ridiculous even when I was a kid.) Are there still people out there who buy U2 albums, or who think Lee Harvey Oswald faked the moon landings?

I think we should all keep an open mind, and be prepared to shift our viewpoints when the evidence supports a new paradigm. In the meantime, be careful when walking, and always listen carefully to everything your swim coach tells you. Have a great day!