A few years back…..(sigh)..ok, nearly two decades back, I was a student at the Special Forces medic course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As luck (well, my luck anyway) would have it, the field trauma portion took place during the winter months. In this section of the course, we were divided into small groups, and during each iteration, someone was the casualty, someone was the medic, someone was the medic’s helper and everyone else kind of stood around watching. You would stabilize the casualty at the scene then package and move him to a “field hospital”, where there was lots more equipment available and it was a whole ten degrees warmer than outside.
One fine day, there was a few inches of nice wet snow on the ground, with more falling. I was the medic and had treated my casualty under fire and moved him back to a covered position for more definitive care. I handed my helper a pair of shears and had him cut nearly all the casualty’s clothes off then rolled him onto a litter, covered him with a blanket (because I’m thoughtful like that), and continued to treat him in preparation for evac back to the tent.
When the first scoop of snow went down the back of my collar, it made me jump, but I figured it had fallen from a tree, so I ignored it and went on treating my patient, who was so into his role, he was even pretending to shiver. When the second scoop of snow started to slide down to the small of my back, I turned to see our instructor, holding a small shovel and glaring at me. He didn’t say anything, so I assumed he was just throwing a little added stress into the scenario and went back to work. In case you were wondering, a lump of snow sliding slowly down your spine to the top of your butt crack is a bit stressful.
The third scoop of snow hit me in the back of the neck with such force that for a second I thought he’d thrown the shovel along with it. When I turned, he was right there. “You still don’t get it.”, he growled. He pointed at the other guys, including the casualty, “All of you, get to the tent and warm up. You!”, he poked me in the chest with the shovel, “take off everything but your boots”.
When I was standing there in the snow, wearing just my boots, he said, “You put your mostly naked patient on a mesh litter, three inches above the snow and only bothered to cover the top half of him with a blanket. If this was real, he’d have slipped into hypothermia and you’d have lost the fight before you even started. Now to help you remember, here’s what’s going to happen”.
It was a pretty good lesson. Almost twenty years later, I can distinctly remember running naked in the snow, weaving through the trees past each of the other small groups, shouting, “Two sides!! My patient has two sides”!!
I may not have been known for my tender bedside manner, but none of my surviving patients can say that I ever let them get too cold.
The takeaway here, other than a cheap laugh at my humiliation, is that you and your multiple sclerosis have more than one side. You and your health care team (which you should be the head of, by the way) can’t neglect all your other sides to solely focus on MS. For example, I have high blood pressure and even though my MS making me more sedentary definitely contributes, I have to remember to look after that side of me. Likewise I can’t devote my complete focus to any one symptom, or aspect of my MS. Yes spacticity is my biggest and most annoying problem, but weak breathing muscles plus difficulty swallowing are sides of MS that shouldn’t be neglected.
My patient is me and I have more than one side. You do too. I don’t suggest hiring someone to shovel snow down your back, but try not to forget it.