Car preparedness Part 2, The First Aid Kit

I always car­ry a first aid kit of some sort.  Does­n’t mat­ter where I go, camp­ing, hik­ing, in the car, in my back­pack.  always.  I have sev­er­al of them depend­ing on the activ­i­ty I am engag­ing in depends on which one I have with me.  If I am hik­ing, I car­ry a small one in my pack that allows me be pre­pared for ticks, small abra­sions, etc.  In the car, I car­ry a larg­er one for poten­tial­ly larg­er issues or acci­dents.  I sug­gest you to the same.  In fact, I sug­gest you exam­ine the con­tents of first aid kits care­ful­ly before you buy one or sev­er­al, and eval­u­ate the needs you may have based on the activ­i­ties you engage in, then I rec­om­mend you buy the kit and retro­fit it with your own addi­tions.  Some of the addi­tions that I have added to my own are as fol­lows:

• Extra Tweez­ers to help get ticks or splin­ters out when you need to
• Pair of sur­gi­cal scis­sors if they are not already in the kit.
• Fin­ger­nail and Toe­nail Clip­pers (the last thing you want when you are walk­ing or hik­ing is a toe­nail caus­ing you prob­lems.  If you have to stop and clip it.  Do it. It is worse than hav­ing a peb­ble in your shoe or boot.
• Soap and/or Antibac­te­r­i­al gel.  I trav­el a lot for work, so those lit­tle bars of hotel soap do a great job for me, as well as a small bot­tle of anti bac­te­r­i­al gel.
• Dis­pos­able latex gloves to keep you pro­tect­ed from the so many dis­eases and germs that some­one else may have that you do not want to con­tract.
• Burn Gel.  Get some­thing good like Water Burn Gel.
• Addi­tion­al Sutch­ers to close a deep­er cut until you can make it to a hos­pi­tal for stitch­es, if you do not know how to sew your­self up.
• Addi­tion­al Cold Pack or two.
• Duct Tape, as it has hun­dreds of uses.
• Ace Ban­dage (if not already includ­ed)
• Water purifi­ca­tion to cre­ate clean water to irri­gate a wound or pro­vide to your injured par­ty if need­ed.
• A cou­ple of Pow­er or Ener­gy bars in case you or some­one you are with needs to have their blood sug­ar ele­vat­ed in a pinch.
• your pre­scrip­tion med­i­cine.  Why you might ask?  Because if you or some­one you know are injured and you are strand­ed for 24 — 48 hours, you will have the invalu­able pre­scrip­tion med­i­cine you need to sur­vive with­out addi­tion­al harm to your­self.
• A book­let on emer­gency first aid that you can review sev­er­al times to become more famil­iar with pro­ce­dures in cer­tain emer­gen­cies.

I also sug­gest look­ing into your local Amer­i­can Red Cross office and tak­ing one of their basic first aid and CPR cours­es.  Let me know if you think I for­got any­thing by post­ing a com­ment.

Next post will be “basic” hunt­ing and fish­ing tools to keep in your trunk in the event you get strand­ed for a few days and have to for­age on your own…