Hi friends, how are people doing today?

I got a lot of my paperwork done yesterday, so I'm feeling a little less stressed. Slowly working through my CPR/First Aide training now.

I understand this is a stressful time for a lot of people. I'm here if you want to talk, or if you don't want to talk but would like hugs. *hugs offered*

Here is a cute kitten in a dumb pyramid hat. Enjoy!

@Sparrow Hi Sparrow! I'm doin' alright though my shoulder hurts today. D:

Yay for CPR/First Aid! Have you been certified before? I've held my certification for something like 4 years now; I re-certify every year even though it lasts for 2. ^^ A few friends and I even started a monthly refresher course where we all run through scenarios together to keep it fresh in our minds! :D

If you have any questions or want to just chit-chat about it, I'm here! ^^

@mawr Hey friendo! I'm sorry about your shoulder. ✨​ *sends healing sparkles* ✨​

Ooh, nice! That's really smart. What led you to get your CPR cert in the first place?

This is my first time as an adult. I had some kinda babysitting CPR in middle school, but this is the full package, with first aide too. I'm doing it for work, but honestly it's a lot of useful life skills that I wish I'd gotten earlier.

@Sparrow I got my cert initially because I was working as a Motorcycle Safety Foundation RiderCoach™® (Basically someone certified to teach people how to ride motorcycles safely ^^)! Having a first-aid and CPR certification was a CA requirement.

I've had to perform CPR before and my patient did not survive. I was not certified at the time and was running off of what I remembered from a course in highschool 8 years prior. That experience drove me to take this way more seriously.

@mawr

That sounds like an extremely traumatic experience. I'm so sorry you went through that. :( Most people are never put in a situation like that.

On the other hand, working as a motorcycle teacher sounds like an incredibly cool job. I keep forgetting you used to live in California. Too bad our timelines here didn't overlap!

@Sparrow I'm proud of the efforts I made, and even looking back at the situation I know there wasn't much more I could've done. He was suffering from anaphylaxis with no epi-pen available, and the swelling was bad enough that we couldn't get air to his lungs without a tracheal tube. The moment the paramedics arrived, that's what they used on him, but it was just too late.

Like most traumatic experiences, it served as an important life lesson that I've taken dearly to heart.

@mawr That makes sense. It sounds like you did the absolute best you could have done in the given situation, and sometimes it's just not possible to save a life.

I'm glad you were able to take a life lesson away from that situation. I considered mentioning that in my last response, but I personally get frustrated when someone outside of the situation puts an inspirational spin on my own trauma. It sounds preachy coming from the outside. So I didn't want to overstep there.

@Sparrow Yeah, trying to put a positive spin on a bad situation is kind of a gamble. It might make them feel better, or it might make them resent you. ^^;;;;;

The route you took on that front by the way was 👌​. Steer towards and validate someone's pain and they'll frequently find a way to spin it to the positive just out of the habits of cultural communication. That's one of the ways many crisis lines help people, too. ♥️

@mawr Yuppp. ^^;

That makes a lot of sense. Hmm, that's another line of training that I feel like could be useful in the broader "life skills" category. I had friends from college who worked at a suicide crisis line as their first "psychology job". I think a job like that would have been too emotionally overwhelming for me at the time, but looking back those are definitely skills I could use in my professional and often personal life.