SUBJECT: Sunk Cost PARTICIPANTS: Korrin, Kara, Church DATE FILED: Bloomingtide 20 STATUS: Complete SUMMARY: Swimming lessons! Splish splash! Nobody died. It was fun(?)
REPORT: Korrin Ataash led the charge with regard to swimming lessons both basic and advanced, helped along by a few others with some experience. This took place on land for verbal instruction and shallow water for physical application. Korrin also made the point to inform people how to spot someone in distress or drowning, as it does not actually tend to look like frantic flailing leading to a heroic and sexy beach rescue as at least some of us have come to expect.
In that respect, both Kara Line and Leonard Church introduced a formalized emergency medical prodedure, CPR ([and here there are several stricken attempts to spell the words a few times] cardiopulmonary resuscitation), used in emergencies when there is no longer a heartbeat, as well as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation used especially with drowning victims (and also usually along with CPR) in order to expel water from the lungs and restore autonomous breathing. CPR involves hard and quick compression of the chest area over the heart at a consistent speed and depth in order to keep blood flowing before finding a way to restart the heart. (Sometimes CPR alone is enough but not typically.) There should also be regular airflow/ventilation from the mouth to the lungs, which here is mostly going to involve mouth-to-mouth--pinching the nose shut and breathing into the victim's mouth to attempt to get air into the lungs. Some giggling and immature comments were had at least until a demonstration. Be forewarned that CPR should not be performed by people not trained, and that cracked ribs are a common complaint (which is perfectly normal and honestly a sign you did it right).
Suggest a training course on non-magical field medicine for the treatment and stabilization of common injuries and battle wounds until a healer can get to them. Magical field medicine for non-healer mages also recommended.
To make the naval forces happy as well, an inventory was taken of the current stock of lifeboats. If possible, suggest the construction of lifejackets/life vests? Material that floats on water and will keep a grown person buoyant, preferably easy to put on and secure, preferably brightly colored or reflective to be easily spotted.
Last of note, Korrin calmly and with humor dispelled incorrect or racist rumors about the swimming abilities of various people (ie dwarves have the Stone in them so they sink to the bottom, qunari are responsible for many of the tales of sea monsters because of their horns, etc). It was a learning experience for all. No one threw any punches, which I would call a success.
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