During one of my routine visits to the residential layout project, where everything would appear chaotically disciplined; chaos for the casual, discipline for the discerning, I saw a small anxious crowd on the road under development. One of our junior staff was writhing in pain holding his right knee, having skid from his bike. There were a cacophony of instructions from on-lookers. Someone instructed the injured to shake and jerk his affected leg, someone appeared with an obnoxiously smelly oil, in an equally obnoxious-looking bottle to be applied on his leg and yet another appeared with a big container of water, enough to choke the injured. I intervened when he was about to be moved to a bone setting centre on the outskirts of the city, run by a third generation quack. It is intriguing why these bone setters are always settled on the outskirts of urban settlements. Most of the patients who visit these quacks with simple problems eventually turn up to orthopaedics with complications. Using the knowledge imbibed as a Boy Scout and the handy resources at the construction site, I immobilised the affected part with an improvised splint. The injured person was shifted to a hospital. The person had a simple fracture and it remained simple, ensuring the recovery faster.
One late evening, way back in the Eighties, I returned home from work to find everyone at home tense and anxious. They could not understand the reason behind my one-year-old son’s incessant cries. Before I could gather my wits, my mother’s face lit up and she told my wife, “it is quite some time the baby has passed urine”. I quickly loosened the thread tied around his waist, summoned a bottle of lukewarm water and fomented his groins, to the consternation of my grandmother. The baby relieved its full bladder on to the anxious face of my grandma, to everybody’s relief. He smiled with sweet relief and my grandma giggled with brine ecstasy.
Panic and ignorance are the two lethal combinations affecting first aid adversely. Ignorance of onlookers to do something, where nothing would have been ideal results in complications. A relative of mine remorsefully remembers the ‘Good Samaritans’, whenever he passes the airport security. When he skid from his bike years back, people lifted him without realising that his leg was caught below the heavy bike. Without their anxious help he would have escaped with minor bruises, but now is forced to explain to the security personnel that there is a rod inside the leg. The ignorance of onlookers resulted in the loss of precious lives, when they encouraged people to jump from the office building which caught fire in Bangalore recently.
While the ignorance of action in disturbing an injured limb or making a person with a head injury drink water could result in complications, the indifference shown towards the distress siren of an ambulance could result in fatality. We act where it is not required and are inert when it is most required.