Emergency Wilderness Medicine

Regenerative Culture Health, Healing & Movement
#1

My greatest fear when I am way out in the woods is that i will dislocate my shoulder. I’ve dislocated it twice, once in a skateboarding accident where i jammed it backwards and the second time I simply slipped into the woods, grabbed on to a tree and my arm basically stayed attached to the tree while my body fell out of it at the shoulder. I was pretty far down in a ravine that time and could not see myself walking out so my companion went for help. I lay face down on a boulder for an hour or two becoming slowly hypothermic (luckily I was wearing all wool clothing, unfortunately they cut it off me later, ruining it all) and trying and failing to will the shoulder back into it’s socket with meditation and mind power. I was just about to get up and start a fire with the birchbark nearby when the rescue squad appeared. It all resulted in a very expensive ambulance ride (I had no insurance, thank god for winning a charitable hospital “scholarship”) and a hefty dose of morphine that did nothing to dull the pain. In the end I wish I had sucked it up and walked out and driven to the hospital, but what I wished more was that myself or someone else had just been able to set my shoulder back right away. Once it is back in place the pain that is around 10 on that little frowny face scale at the emergency room stops almost immediately and goes back to a smiley 1 or 2. It’s amazing. and horrible because the EMTs and doctors won’t touch the thing until x-rays are done to make sure nothing is broken and you know how long that can take.

So my question is does anyone have information about dislocations and how to put them right? Can the shoulder get dislocated both behind and in front of the socket? I was awake the first time it was set and all they did was have me lay on my stomach with my hand hanging off the bed while the doctor pushed from behind and a friend pulled down on my hand. But that didn’t work in the woods. I was passed out the second time so i don’t know what they did though I think I was on my back. I’ve tried to look this up on the internet before but it makes me nauseous . I should really exercise my shoulder too. I always quit going to my rehabilitation half way thorugh, and now it is so freaking delicate. I tore it a little in december playing a ridiculous game (sober) that involves picking up a cereal box from the ground with just your teeth and cutting away 1 inch strips after each round. Does anyone know what activities are best for strenghtening the shoulder? I just know I will never stick to an exercise regimine but like paddling, or rock climbing, or hide pulling, or wood chopping I might actually do. One thing I can’t do is pitch baseballs. Sorry. They told me not to do that. You can imagine my dismay.

#2

Hmm, I sympathize, I found out a couple years back that my sporadic bouts of extreme back pain are from having a very minor form of spina bifuda (my last vertebrae doesn’t have any bone covering the nerves), so moving in exactly the wrong way can screw me for weeks unless I throw an ice pack on it and stop moving…

Not really sure, but I would say if you can paddle, that would be excellent, it seems like it would be a good range of movement for a dislocated shoulder. Not sure about wood chopping, there might be too much of a jarring impact…??? If you can, what about archery? It’s a smooth motion for your upper arm/shoulder, but it’ll still build strength.

#3

Archery would be awesome. It is my left shoulder and I am left-handed so I have that advantage at least for strenghtening it. Any other lefties on the forum?!

#4

New poster, short lurker, long time interest in self reliance and teotwawki.

I took a wilderness first aid course, designed for outdoor professionals who operate outside the reach of ambulances and the like. We were taught (in theory, we never actually did it) how to put a shoulder and a hip back in place in the field.

The shoulder involved standing in front of the casualty, facing the same direction. Take hold of the arm in question, squat a bit and get your shoulder in the armpit. In a quick and firm motion, stand up, lean forward and pull down.

There are a couple of other techniques as well. Laying a casualty down on a table and tying a weight to the arm (or leg, for the hip) in question will eventually tire the muscle holding the bone out of the socket and it will fall back in place. This will take some time.

As for archery, you should find some definite advantage in this activity in strengthening your dominant shoulder. A proper draw is a pulling with the back muscle, with some work done by the shoulder and little by the bicep.

#5

Hey There,

I was just browsing, and read your post. I’ve always been very interested in first aid, and since I was pretty young I have taken lifesaving courses and first aid courses. I’m a certified Lifeguard, and I have my Wilderness and Remote First Responder certification. Basically its an advanced first aid course that teaches you how to respond in rural settings where you are more than one hour away from difinitive care. You are taught how to improvise your care for your victim using the resources you have available to you. I think this is a vital course for anyone who works or travels in the outdoors, because you never know when you may have to help someone or even yourself.

The process of re-locating a dislocation is actually called a “reduction” (dont ask me! I didnt make it up!) and there are a lot of different ways you can do it. Sometimes some methods work better than others. You should look them up, so that you will know to try different things if one method doesnt seem to be working. One thing to note is that dislocations are not usually something that is a quick fix. The muscles in the area, immediately begin to tense up and become tight which makes putting the dislocation back in a very long, difficult proccess, as you need to actually fatigue the muscles enough so that they give and the arm (or dislocation) can be put back in.

I would recommend strengthening your muscles to try and reduce the amount of dislocations you may suffer from. One good exercise is kayaking backwards! A lot of paddlers dont realize how strong their forward paddle is comapred to their backpaddle! Even 50 strokes is tiring! But it evens out the muscle strenghts all over your shoulder, so that the front is not stronger, therefore leading to easier dislocations. Also, make sure that when you are doing a lot of physical activities, that you are keeping your elbows in, its when those elbows get out, and far away from your body that dislocations are prone to happen.

My biggest recommendation to anyone however is to go out and even get a Basic Wilderness First Aid course. It could be a lifesaver one day. I have had to use it only a couple of times while as a councellor for a kids camp on a 3 day backpacking trip but the knowledge is invaluable. Especially since they teach you to think outside the usual box, and you learn cool tricks like how to build stretchers out of climbing rope, or how to traction a leg using ski poles and brances! Its actually really cool!