Wilderness Medicine Course

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Wilderness Medicine Course
This was a course designed to teach you how to practice medicine in remote areas when you have no supplies, technology or support. It also taught survival and rescue methods.
Unfortunately the course was a bit disorganized and it got cut short leaving out the medical portion. Dana and I did however receive the survival and rescue training and I will tell you the entertaining (for you)/traumatizing(for me) bits.
Highlights: saving our broken legged “patient” who was trapped inside a cave and transporting her though an underground river, up a muddy slope and through the dense bug/snake infested jungle.
Repelling down a 150ft cliff in the dark (splinting a patients arm and leg half way down)
The best part (for you): surviving for 2 days in the jungle with only a machete and a sparker. The first day we learned about edible plants and their medicinal uses from our crazy eyed (literally) medicine man (later I found that all the plants looked identical) and how to build a shelter. We spent the day building a shelter, boiling water and getting food (heart of palm). The 4 of us then spent the night together in the jungle. The next morning we were separated so that we each had to find food, water, build a shelter, start a fire and most importantly: SURVIVE! They said they would come find us in the next morning.
I was ok with building the shelter but all I could find to drink was a filthy puddle from which I boiled some water. Since there wasn’t much to eat, I just ate heart of palm (which really just tastes like a tree and takes soo much effort to chop down to get) .
It gets dark about 5:30 pm (so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face) so from then on I sat in my little shelter and thought of all the things I was supposed to watch out for:
Pit vipers and Ferdilance (many of which I had seen scurrying under my feet as I was harvesting palm leaves that afternoon) - instructions: don’t step on one
Wild Boars (will attack on sight and won’t stop until someone’s dead) - instructions: throw backpack at it and run (except I didn’t have my backpack anymore...)
Killer bees - instructions: pretend to be a tree and let them pass
Cougars - instructions: hope they are more scared of you them you are of them
Various poisonous plants - instructions: don’t touch anything in the jungle
Illegal poachers - instructions: don’t turn your flash light on as they might shoot you and ask questions later. (We had heard some on the first day so this to me was the biggest threat)
Evil jungle spirit which might come and paralyze you in your sleep (which happened to our instructor many times in the past)- instructions - don’t anger the jungle spirit!
So as the night went on I could hear large animals slowly walking around me and howler monkeys screaming. I tried to tell myself that it was probably just a deer or sloth, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the above listed! Also, I didn’t want to shine my light at them in-case it was a poacher, so I just sat with my machete ready the whole night until 5am when it started to get light again when I passes out for an hour. Most terrifying night of my life!
I did have someone there to help me, who was on my side. It was a large frog who hopped up to my shelter as the sun was setting and stayed with me until the sun came up the next day. He hopped around me all night eating all the bugs I had attracted, even some off my shoes. I called him my protective jungle spirit and was happy for his company.
In the morning our guides came and picked us all up and we went and ate our faces off after practically eating nothing for 2 days. I’ve never been so filthy, tired, hungry and exhausted.
At least I know I’m a survivor!
From then on the course fell apart, instructors didn’t show and we left for more travels back in Mexico.

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