Emergency Situation at the Water Park

I am still shaken up about it. I truly am. Never before have I had to deal with anything remotely similar to this before. In the training we were always told about stuff like this, but I didn't think that it would happen to me. What happened?

I am a city lifeguard and was working today at the Bay, a mini water park about 10 minutes from my house. Around 1:40ish, I was about to rotate onto break when a woman came up to me and said that someone was hurt and needed help. I freaked out, forgot to whistle, and just went over to see what was wrong. When I asked her if she was OK, she freaked out, screaming that her wrist was broken. Apparently she had tripped over a chair, her knee gave out, and she landed on her wrist. I was freaking out as well so I held her wrist to keep it from moving and sent for Tyler (another lifeguard who was on duty at the time) to go get Logan, the manager. Tyler blew the whistle for them to come (since I had forgotten to) and Logan showed up with two other guards who had been on break with ice and a sling. Someone at the office called 911 and she was able to call her husband to have him get there as soon as he could. We got her in the shade, her wrist stabilized with ice on it, and her feet elevated, but we all wished that there was more that we could do. All that we really could do was make sure that she was comfortable and help locate her kids in the park.

About fifteen minutes later, the paramedics showed up and took over. I felt like I was getting in the way so I had to leave and go up to the guard office to calm down. I was still pretty shaken over the whole thing. When the paramedics had left with the woman and the incident report was being filled out it was time for safety check and my job was to go guard the baby pool.

If it weren't for Tyler, I probably would have completely freaked out. He came up to me at the start of safety check making sure that I was alright, letting me know that I did great for my first real emergency. several minutes later, he visited me at the baby pool while picking up trash and asked if the jitters were gone yet. The world needs more people like Tyler: genuinely nice people who truly care and are willing to help you out if you need it.

I now know why not everyone can be a lifeguard. Not everyone can stay calm in that kind of situation and be able to do what they can to help out people who really need it. I also know that I can do this job well.