Rachel Wise: Stand aside people - I have my First Aid certificate!

Do you count applying sticking plaster to grandchildren? Photo / File

It is a lifestyle? Or a life sentence? Having even the smallest of lifestyle blocks can doom the unwary to a life of unruly sheep, petulant pigs, downright despicable chickens, unfortunate episode involving electric fences, and water pumps that break down on the Friday evening of long weekends. Rachel Wise tells it like it is. Mostly.
I spent a morning hanging out at the hospital yesterday, just a casual visit to get all my metalwork X-rayed and check that it's all where it should be.

It makes a change to be strolling in bearing an appointment card, not arriving by ambulance, or following an ambulance, or escorting daughters in active labour, or visiting prone parents and husbands who have had bits removed or added.

I feel it's not a great sign that I know my way around the extensive network of HB Hospital's corridors, although it does come in handy at times.

There was a slight accident in my vicinity a few weeks ago involving a slip (not me) and a fall (still not me) and an ambulance (also not for me), and one of those on the scene told me I was very calm in the face of it all.

Rachel Wise.

Then she added "but of course you must be used to it."

No, I answered. Then I thought a little bit and said ... maybe.

It's just that, well, we're encouraged to be active, aren't we? Yet as soon as you get off the couch, life is out to get you.

Why, just this week I had to negotiate a frosty, slippery deck while wearing gumboots and carrying a bucket, to go out through a muddy paddock to feed the chickens.

There were plenty of opportunities for slippage, trippage and spillage but keeping all that in mind I made it out to the chook house in one piece and fed the fowls ... then stumbled and sprained my ankle on the way back.

By the time I'd applied ice, pressure and elevation I was running late for work so I postponed the "rest" part of the acronym and limped quickly through my morning ablutions and off to the office, where nobody was at all surprised I was faintly injured.

I mean, I have turned up at work with grazed knees from falling off my own platform shoes, with two black eyes and an equine-inflicted broken nose, with a broken collarbone from falling off a horse and a broken foot from standing under one.

Which is why I thought it was a great idea when I was asked to go on a two-day first aid course recently.

I've been on one before and found it really useful. Especially when I got squashed flat by a falling equine last year and I was able check my own airway and circulation and not move myself ... although if it had come to doing CPR on myself I would have been challenged.

I do remember that it has to be done to the tune of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees though.

Apart from that I hadn't really had a chance to use my first aid skills unless you count applying sticking plaster to grandchildren.

And the first aid certificate, which I had proudly put on the fridge at home, was looking a little dog-eared, so it was good to know that if I passed the course I'd have a shiny new certificate - and shiny new skills.

There were nearly 20 of us on the course and when it came to pairing off and practising I was teamed with a salty seadog who had been a deep-sea fisherman for many years.

He had some great stories.

In fact, nearly every practice scenario we were given, either he or I had encountered something similar. We started swapping yarns, much to the horror of some of our classmates.

He had tales of lost fingers, busted knees and people pierced by fishhooks and fishing knives. My tales were more busted bones and the car crashes - as I've spent a few years travelling State Highway 2.

As we bandaged each other's pretending arterial bleeds and compound fractures, ticking off each task on our worksheets, we chatted enthusiastically about real blood and gore.

At the end of the day the salty seadog and I both passed with flying colours, shiny new certificates and the confidence to open airways, check for bleeding, do CPR while humming a BeeGees classic, brandish bandages, apply direct pressure and yell for someone to bring a defibrillator.

I hope neither of us have to use it any time soon but I'm sure everyone feels much safer knowing we're here in an emergency? Right?