Chapter 13: Providing For Your Own Medical Needs
In a Doomsday scenario, the possibility that you or another member of your party might suffer some injury or illness is very real. Understanding how to provide basic first aid and treatment for illnesses or injury may save your life or that of a loved one. Even if you and your fellow survivors are fortunate enough not to become ill or be injured during a Doomsday event, there are still medical needs that might require advanced preparation, such as existing health problems requiring medication.
Existing Medical Concerns
Planning ahead is always the best method when it comes to medical concerns. If you or any member of your family requires regular medication for any health issue, talk to your doctor and get a prescription for at least an extra month's supply of your medicine if possible. This advice also applies to any special equipment required to deliver or properly use the medication, such as insulin needles and diabetic testing supplies. Hopefully, any Doomsday event that we could foresee will have been remedied within a couple of months or at least to the point where medications will become available for purchase again.
If you or a family member suffer from allergies to any kind of insect bite, it is a good idea to talk to your doctor about an emergency precaution, such as the Epi-pen, which can be kept on hand and administered after a bug bite or sting to prevent anaphylactic shock. Severe allergic reactions to insect bites can cause extreme distress and death so the extra expense for this medication is well justified.
Basic First Aid
Every prepper's kit should include the necessities for basic first aid in the event of an emergency. While your kit doesn't have to be expensive or all inclusive, it should contain enough supplies to handle whatever situation you might encounter. A practice among many preppers is to assemble basic kits for their automobile and travel bags while setting up more elaborate first aid kits for their home and shelter supplies.
The most basic first aid kits should include:
- A variety of bandages, in different sizes and shapes
- At least one roll of gauze
- A selection of gauze pads, in assorted sizes
- An elastic wrap bandage with clips
- Surgical tape
- Surgical scissors
- Alcohol pads
- Antibiotic ointment
- Saline solution for cleaning wounds or eye wash
- Tweezers
- An emergency first aid guide that includes instructions on the treatments of many minor emergencies, as well as an outline on rescue breathing and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
- Non-latex surgical gloves
- Thermal space blanket
More advanced first aid kits might also include:
- Hot and Cold packs
- Scalpel in sterile packaging
- Hemostats (commonly known as clamps)
- Sutures and needles in sterile packaging
- Blood pressure cuff
- Stethoscope
- Thermometer
- Burn ointment
- Antiseptic spray or gel
- Pen light (for checking pupil dilation and providing light in hard to see areas)
- Medications, such as aspirin, antibiotics, anti-diarrhea pills, emetics, pain medicine, anti-inflammatory pills and anti-histamines.
The limits of the advanced first aid kit are only put in place by budget and imagination. If you can afford to create a miniature hospital emergency room crash cart in your Doomsday preparations, complete with a defibrillator and an IV pole, then it is certainly something worth doing, provided you understand how to use the equipment properly when the need for it arises.
In preparing for emergencies, you should take into account that most medications and sterilization methods have specific shelf lives. If you are adding regular medications to your emergency supplies, regularly rotate them with your newest medicines to ensure that your stock is fresh and fully effective when it is needed. For sterile supplies or over the counter medicines, be sure to keep tabs on the expiration dates and purchase new replacements before discarding expired items.
Knowledge is Power
All of the medical equipment in the world won't do you a bit of good if you do not know how to use it properly. In planning for a Doomsday event, it is wise to add training in first aid and emergency trauma care to your list of necessities. Many areas offer such courses in conjunction with CPR and rescue breathing classes. The cost is usually very low when taken in the perspective that this training could save your life or that of a loved one. While it is certainly worth the effort to have your whole family trained in first aid and CPR, this may not be logistically or financially possible. It is still highly advisable that at least one member of your group participate in this type of training and share the basic skills with the other members of your family.
Aside from hands-on training in first aid, you should also add a few books to your shelter's library that concern themselves with first aid. In an emergency situation, it is easy to panic and hesitate on small details. Having these books as a reference to affirm your decisions can be very helpful. Manuals that discuss homeopathic or herbal remedies for illness may be beneficial as well so that you can continue to enjoy good health even if pharmaceutical companies are not around to supply medications in a post-apocalyptic scenario.