So the worst thing happesn; you shoot yourself:

[Daedalus7]

Yeah +1 on what Jeff White said - I'll just add that, if you do feel the need to use a tourniquet (and this should definitely be a last resort to stop bleeding - I'm an EMT and its very discouraged for even us to use them - if you need a tourniquet, things are pretty damn bad), if will take about 4-6 hours for your leg to become necrotic and be completely beyond recovery.

Don't try to cauterize your wound - you will definitely do more damage than good by sticking a hot knife into a wound. The only time I could ever see anyone doing self-cauterization would be in cases of complete extremity amputation.

 

[Jeff White]

TheEconomist,
Yes I have done business with Supply Captain before. I know the owner of the company, he's a former S4 from a unit in 4th ID hence the name Supply Captain. I recommend them.

Jeff

 

[jeepmor]

This has me thinking, because I'm 5 miles from any road per se, use my superglue that I keep in my kit for hiking blisters. This stuff works, and was it's original design. Not blisters but quick field dressing.

Due to this thread, I'm tossing some in my kit and making sure it's always stocked from now on. I don't anticipate shooting myself or others, but then again, no one ever does now do they. However, once the bleeding is controlled with pressure, superglue will close things up.

Note to self, try not to glue finger to wound. I have used it for blisters and minor cuts, and I must say, it works really well.

BTW, on a more mundane note, this is a good fix for blisters. You pop the blister, and inject some superglue to stick blistered skin back to your tender underlying skin. It does not take much. It works, it stings a lot, but you will be hiking again in more comfort than before. I suspect it would be similar in application to a bullet wound, but the sting would be a touch more, but far less than the initial wound for sure. If you hit something like your femoral artery, you are not going anywhere fast. Build a signal fire, blow a whistle and hope you don't bleed out because it'll only take a few minutes and you will be coyote food.

 

[sacp81170a]

If you hit something like your femoral artery, you are not going anywhere fast.

If you hit your femoral artery, you're going to bleed out in about 60 seconds, give or take a few. Not much can be done short of a trauma unit with plenty of blood on hand.

 

[mlandman]

Disclaimer #1 - I am NOT a doctor or in ANY medical profession, If you take MY advice, I am responsible for doodly-squat.

Disclaimer #2 - I have not read the entire thread so this MAY be repetitious

OK...that being said...I do a fair amount of solo hiking. I hike lightly loaded but not to the point of insane risk/discomfort. I pack a summer weight of less that 15 lbs. Here is what I do/take when I am on a hike in remote/wilderness areas and would have to "self rescue" in the event of a serious injury:

I have a med-kit that has, along with the "normal" hike related stuff, Bactroban. This is a prescription only topical goo that is almost as effective as intravenous antibiotics. I carry a disposable suture kit; two threaded sterile curved needles with surgical thread. I carry super glue. I carry 2 days worth of prescription pain meds as well as a bountiful supple of ibuprofen. I DO NOT carry aspirin, that caused longer clot time - bad thing. I have a minimum of sterile gauze because the wound will be cleaned as well as possible. I use an alcohol stove (ultra light weight!) and will use fuel to clean the wound.

Do all the compression stuff, clean the wound, and IF significant bleeding has stopped, dress the wound with bactroban and cover it with sterilized cover and duct tape. Get the heck back to civilization.

If bleeding can not be controlled, the wound will need to be closed. This is done by suture, gross but...you do what is needed and/or glue. This is basically a bad practice since you WILL get a systematic infection. If the bleeding can not be stopped, you will die anyway so infection is not the issue.

Get your A$$ to medical help.

Remember, I may be 1 - 3 days from rescue. This is based on having to get my body to help, not based on a long term best medical practices.

On the Personal Locator Beacons...if you in a place that your GPS or satellite phone would not work (tight narrow canyons) you will not be able to hit a satellite. If you are in an inaccessible/remote location (ummm...that's WHY I go hiking in the first place!) rescue may still be hours away. For the blokes who died on Mt. Hood, a beacon may have just made finding the bodies easier. Just be aware of technology's limits.

 

[heron]

Generally:
Take a "wilderness medicine" course. These begin where Red Cross first aid courses leave off, and assume that you are more than an hour from a trailhead. You'll learn how to improvise all kinds of splints, tie bandages, do damage assessments, etc.
Don't go out alone if you're going to be too far from help. Make sure your companion has the training, or at least has the stomach to follow your instructions. You could slip and fall and injure yourself on the back, where you couldn't see or reach to apply first aid. Training is better, though, as you could also sustain other kinds of injuries, including getting knocked unconscious.
Self-induced GSW shouldn't be your main concern in the wilderness; it's a rare problem compared with dehydration, hypothermia, heat stroke, and a bunch of other nasty surprises.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Mind you, do NOT just apply a tourniquet anytime you get hit. If it's a smaller caliber weapon you may not need to go to such a dramatic step. Given the amount of time you'll have to keep that tourniquet on, you can figure on losing everything below it. It's the last step to take in cases of a lesser wound.

I was thinking the same thing after reading 20 threads that all seemed to include the word "tourniquet". I am no doctor, but have learned in my readings that "tourniquet" and "amputation" are two words that usually go hand-in-hand, but in no particular order.

As many others have said, short of an arterial bleed, most limb wounds are best treated with a dressing and direct pressure. There aren't too many places the blood can go besides out of the hole(s) where limbs are concerned.

 

[sacp81170a]

On the Personal Locator Beacons...if you in a place that your GPS or satellite phone would not work (tight narrow canyons) you will not be able to hit a satellite. If you are in an inaccessible/remote location (ummm...that's WHY I go hiking in the first place!) rescue may still be hours away. For the blokes who died on Mt. Hood, a beacon may have just made finding the bodies easier. Just be aware of technology's limits.

Uh, not to pick nits, but GPS requires more than one satellite signal to get a fix and at least three to get an accurate fix, which is why you don't get good function in a canyon. The PLB only needs to get the signal to one satellite to start SAR looking for you. You are correct in that, depending on your location, rescue could be hours away, so it's not like having a magic carpet to whisk you to medical attention. It sure beats a 3-day hike from the nearest aid, though.

The guys on Mt. Hood had enough time to build a snow cave and survived for a couple of days. Given their location at or near the top of a mountain, a PLB signal would have easily alerted SAR to their position. PLB's also give off a short range homing signal in addition to the satellite distress signal, so SAR units within a couple of miles could have easily located them. The batteries are rated for 24 hours of continuous output and you can carry spares, so at least one or two satellites would be in range sometime during that 24 hours unless you happened to be in a cave. Let's also not forget that a PLB is a positive distress signal. They KNOW you're in trouble when it goes off, as opposed to waiting a couple of days for you to show up and then wondering what happened (he said he was gonna be back on Tuesday and now it's Wednesday... better call someone...)

You're right, though, technology has its limits. Given a serious enough injury and lack of medical training and supplies, the PLB by itself isn't going to save your life. Dead in 3 hours waiting for rescue is just as dead as waiting 3 days. It's just another piece in the puzzle.

 

[Kimber1911_06238]

depends on what you shoot yourself with and what the bullet hits. If you hit the femoral artery, you're pretty much screwed...even calling for help on a cell phone you'll likely bleed out before they find you. I guess in concept a tourniquet would work, but you have a good chance of losing a leg. either way, not a good situation.

 

[Caimlas]

Lastly, and perhaps a little crazy (compared to self-surgery), is there anything you could do with superglue, either to close the veins that are broken or to close the exterior of the wound?

IIRC, that was precisely what Super Glu was first invented for - expedient field suture - but I could be mistaken. I don't recall why it wasn't used as such (or rather, whether or not it was).

I have a friend who got into a knife fight as a teen and got cut pretty bad. I don't know if he got stuck or slashed, but I do know that he took a fair amount of super glue and sealed it up. It left a bad, bad scar (6"x2" or so along the bottom of his rib cage), and it still hurts him today (10 years later). As far as I know, he sealed up the surface of the exposed flesh to stop the bleeding, similar to what a person might due to cauterize a wound.

If I were put in such a situation, I'd apply a tourniquet to stem the bleeding (depending on how bad it is), and then attempt to further reduce the flow of blood from the wound through pressure. I'd attempt to sterilize the wound and bandage it.

If it was bad enough to need sutures or something like that, I'd attempt to do so best I could - hey, what else could I do? Who cares if St. Peter laughs at me? I'd be trying to stay alive, here.

Question: Would cauterizing actually work in such a situation? Is that valid medical technique? I imagine a propane/alcohol camp stove + a long hunting knife, metal tent stake, or similar object could do that job fairly quickly.

knock on wood, I've never shot myself... and all the people I've shot I ment to shoot, except for one, but he was next to a guy I ment to shoot and would have been next anyway, so that doesn't count, I just changed the order in which I shot them unintentionally.

ROFL!

 

[Abndoc]

Don't get your medical advice from people you don't know over the internet.

Some of the stuff I've read on this post might unnecessarily cost you a limb.

The best advice I've read here is to take a course in emergency first aid and learn what you are doing, from professionals.

 

[mlandman]

sacp81170a posted -
Uh, not to pick nits, but GPS requires more than one satellite signal to get a fix and at least three to get an accurate fix

Good point. I have been in lots of places where I was not able to grab 1 GPS satellite, it was just (a little) dead weight on my shoulder strap. I have also been, and this is more topical, many places where a satellite phone failed to get a signal. These were not open range land or on mountain trails but in canyon lands.

 

[Aaryq]

Everyone's in love with quick clot. Believe it or not, there was a time before quick clot was common. I've spoken to quite a few corpsmen and one of their little tricks of the trade is tampons. You stick a tampon in the wound and it works great. After that, I'd make a crutch and try to hike out. As I'm going, I'll fire 3 rounds in the air every now and then to tell people I'm in distress. The key is to not get excited (just like a snake bite) and go for help.

 

[sacp81170a]

The best advice I've read here is to take a course in emergency first aid and learn what you are doing, from professionals.

Abndoc:

I've had the typical infantry type first aid training given in the military plus some refreshers on CPR and such. What courses would you suggest?

 

[Feanaro]

Believe it or not, there was a time before quick clot was common.

The same goes for toilet paper. I'll stick to utilizing technology.

 

[Caimlas]

Some of the stuff I've read on this post might unnecessarily cost you a limb.

Kinda disingenuous to say that without stating what the dangerous behavior is, isn't it? Would you not correct someone's poor firearm handling practices, yet you don't correct something which would invariably lead to loss of limb and possibly death? That's not too cool.

 

[Abndoc]

course in emergency first aid

As heron stated, take a wilderness medicine course or take an EMT course at your local college.

Would you not correct someone's poor firearm handling practices

OP assumes it's too late for that.

stating what the dangerous behavior is

It's the repeated statement about tourniquet use. You need to assess the wound prior to applying a tourniquet. Some have stated this, most have not. Perhaps some of the other posters meant pressure dressing, instead.

Using a tourniquet when it is not needed will lead to unneeded tissue death of a limb that otherwise could have been saved.

 

[1911ShooterTJ]

I'm not a doctor... but I would imagine sealing a wound with superglue would only stop the bleeding from reaching your skin. And blood not being circulated in your veins and arteries (internal bleeding) seems useless to me.

 

[Duramax]

John Wayne would pull the lead out of an unspent shell with his teeth and pore the powder on the wound and set it on fire.

 

[never_retreat]

Carry an EPRIB if your that far off the beaten path.

 

[matt87]

John Wayne would pull the lead out of an unspent shell with his teeth and pore the powder on the wound and set it on fire.

Yeah big deal. John Rambo pulled the bullet aout of a 7.62x39 round with his (excessively large and heavy penis-compensating) knife (or should that be 'shoddy sword') and used the powder to cauterise a puncture wound from a piece of wood he pushed out through fresh skin himself! Now THAT is realistic!