Well after I had a run in the other day on a call with one, someone decided to share a story about it. Talk about painful……from a follower….. So, a long time ago, I ended up in Arizona thanks to a military transfer. I was from Pennsylvania where volunteer firefighting was all over and I had just started to volunteer before going into the military. Most people visualize Arizona like you see it in old westerns of cartoons. Tucson is far from that, in fact it is one of the nicest places I have ever lived. We have a 10,000 foot mountain on the northeast edge of town that is ok skiing in the winter and a nice cool getaway in the summer. When I first came to Arizona I started to look for where I could use my new EMS skills and my first stop was with Search & Rescue / Mountain Rescue. After being with them for a while, we had a new ER doc come and ask to join. (he wanted to save the world too). So he learned the ropes (pun intended) and all the other basic training for steep angle rescue and he was ‘blessed’ to come on rescues. We get paged out one fine sunny afternoon for a “heart attack” atop the 10,000 foot mountain, on the west Pusch Ridge side. This are can only be accessed by Helicopter, driving to the top and about an hour hike, or ‘trail blazin’ up the side. Since we were fresh out of helicopters that moment and the long way was too long, we all opted to trail-blaze. We all met up at the end of Magee Road and started up the side. We were all carrying enough gear to treat and extricate our cardiac patient and were moving at a good pace. Until… I heard behind me a scuffle, a thump and AHHHHHHHHHH……. Crash…… Our new ER doc tripped on a rock, lost balance and went prone into a full mature jumping cholla cactus patch. I paused to help extricate the doc from the cactus and he had spines in every square inch of his anterior body (but they missed his eyes). A group carried him down and transported him to (his) ER. (yes, he never lived that down) I continued up the hill only to find a mental patient with a fine ticker. We walked him out the long way and had him transported to our local mental health facility. So, if hiking in Arizona, watch your step for more reasons than the occasional rattle snake. Ps: here is cholla cactus youtube/watch?v=51okh96JpaA
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:34:36 +0000