Anticipating Emergency
On Saturday I received 3 hours of CPR training and certification. I now know how to breathe into the plastic wrapped mouth of a fully amputated dummy, I know how to adminster the Heimlich maneuver, and most importantly, I learned a secret 911 code that could save my life!! I'm going to share it with you to give you a chance at life as well. It's the right thing to do. This is Bob, he traveled with me on this journey of discovery.
So, the first vital piece of information is to make sure you have a landline at your house. If you just can't stand to do that, then make sure that your billing address for your cell phone is your home address. In the case of a 911 call on a cell phone that can't be completed because something awful is happening to the caller, the address that shows up for the operator is the billing address. Only useful if you're at home and that's where your life-threatening emergency is happening.
So, say you're choking, or there's a psychotic killer in your house and you've found a place to hide, but you need help to survive the night... you have your phone, but you can't make a sound that anyone could recognize as a call of distress. You have to stay perfectly quiet, but you have that cordless landline phone in your hand. Here's what you do: when the operator picks up and says her/his schpiel, the way to let them know that you're in distress, and not that you dialed by accident, or changed your mind about the state of emergency, is to knock on the mouthpiece of the phone three times.
Ok, got that, they say their line, you knock on the mouthpiece 3 TIMES. This lets them know that you need help. They'll send police and a paramedic automatically when they get this secret code, no matter what the emergency.
I'm less inclined to want to try the secret 911 code than I am the CPR that we learned. I now have this strong desire to try it all out in real life. According to our CPR instructor, less than 10% of the population has CPR training, but what's the percentage of people who've been saved by it? Probably even less. In 8 plane flights that I took in the last two months, two of them had medical emergencies on board. Both times there was a doctor or a nurse present who was able to help the person on board until the plane could land and they could get out to the ambulance on the tarmack. I thought it was odd to happen with such frequency.
Is it wrong to want people to dance with danger just so I can cut in?
So, the first vital piece of information is to make sure you have a landline at your house. If you just can't stand to do that, then make sure that your billing address for your cell phone is your home address. In the case of a 911 call on a cell phone that can't be completed because something awful is happening to the caller, the address that shows up for the operator is the billing address. Only useful if you're at home and that's where your life-threatening emergency is happening.
So, say you're choking, or there's a psychotic killer in your house and you've found a place to hide, but you need help to survive the night... you have your phone, but you can't make a sound that anyone could recognize as a call of distress. You have to stay perfectly quiet, but you have that cordless landline phone in your hand. Here's what you do: when the operator picks up and says her/his schpiel, the way to let them know that you're in distress, and not that you dialed by accident, or changed your mind about the state of emergency, is to knock on the mouthpiece of the phone three times.
Ok, got that, they say their line, you knock on the mouthpiece 3 TIMES. This lets them know that you need help. They'll send police and a paramedic automatically when they get this secret code, no matter what the emergency.
I'm less inclined to want to try the secret 911 code than I am the CPR that we learned. I now have this strong desire to try it all out in real life. According to our CPR instructor, less than 10% of the population has CPR training, but what's the percentage of people who've been saved by it? Probably even less. In 8 plane flights that I took in the last two months, two of them had medical emergencies on board. Both times there was a doctor or a nurse present who was able to help the person on board until the plane could land and they could get out to the ambulance on the tarmack. I thought it was odd to happen with such frequency.
Is it wrong to want people to dance with danger just so I can cut in?
posted by gr at
5:11 PM
Post a Comment
Links to this post:Create a Link
<< Home