The Ambulance Ride from Hell

Last year my two-year-old decided to do a swan dive off his highchair.

He landed on our wooden floorboards.

On his head.

As he lay in my wife’s arms, concussed, I rang triple zero, and then quickly jumped in my ute and drove all the way to our farm gate to meet the ambulance. As I sat there waiting ‒ without knowing what was happening to my son back at the house ‒ I made a promise to myself that I’d get first aid training.

It ended up taking the ambos an incredibly stressful (for me) 25 minutes to arrive. Thankfully, they were amazing. And, thankfully, by that stage my son had come to and was re-enacting the fall for them by performing headstands in the kitchen. Still, just to be sure, they took him to the Royal Children’s Hospital, where he was given a clean bill of health.

Fast forward to this weekend, and I now have my Certificate in First Aid.

For my wife’s Christmas present, I paid for our 10-strong family (me, Liz, my mum and dad, etc) to come over to the farm and do the full-day course with an instructor from St John Ambulance. It was actually a fun experience for all of us to do together. I got to wrap my mummy up like a mummy, and I luckily avoided giving my father mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The cost of the basic one-day first aid course is around $200 per person, and you can do it at one of St John’s training facilities, which are located throughout the country. Alternatively, like we did, you can arrange a bunch of your family or mates and make a day of it.

Now, if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself “I really should do this”, please do me a favour: right now, whip out your phone and type in http://stjohn.org.au/. Book in a class for a weekend within the next few months.

It might well be a life-changing investment.

Tread Your Own Path!