Today was a busy day for me. In the morning, I went to a local church for the ‘We Matter’ forum, which was sponsored by the Black Women’s Health Imperative. The goal of the forum was to educate women about vitamin D deficiency and its impact on healthy bones.
I learned that having dark skin is a double-edged sword: While they protect us against severe sunburns and cause us to wrinkle less severely as we age, they also decrease our absorption of vitamin D from the sun. To correct this, the panelists recommended that we include more vitamin D-rich foods in the diet, such as tuna, salmon, milk, eggs, fortified cereal, and lean beef. The forum was full of excellent information and had great speakers. I learned a lot.
Around lunch time, I had to gear up (green vest and matching helmet) for my final exercise as part of the CERT team. CERT is an organization that is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and is designed to teach regular citizens how to respond and assist emergency personnel in the event of natural disasters, like tornados, hurricanes, and floods.
Anyway, the exercise scenario was that a tornado had swept through a subdivision. People were trapped under cars, buildings had caught fire, and there were several people injured or dead. The scenario was staged at the local fire department and it was realistic: There were real fires to put out, actors who were made up to look like they were wounded, fake blood and all. To complete the scene, the firefighters were even making it “rain”; they had hoses raining down water on us as we were attempting to rescue victims. By the time it was over, I was soaked to the bone!
We had to comb the woods to look for victims and use pry bars and cribbing techniques to rescue people who were trapped under objects. As my post title says, it was quite a day. After it was over, the group had a debrief session with the program coordinator, Captain Pye, who told us what we did right and what could have been improved. I’m happy to say that he was pleased with how we performed. It was a chance to put the skills we have learned for the last nine weeks to the test. And what a test it was.
Next Thursday is our last class. We will discuss disaster psychology and then have a barbecue. I haven’t decided what I’m going to bring, but it’ll be something healthy :). After that, we will graduate and will get our certificates in a ceremony at a city council meeting in December.
Now, I’m going to rest. I am sure my arms will be sore in the morning from all the lifting and carrying I did today. I will exercise in the morning, but the DVDs I use (I’m rotating the DVDs in the Firm Body Sculpting System 2 right now – www.firmdirect.com) are a combination of aerobics and weight training. I think I’m going to skip the weights tomorrow though and follow along with Suzanne, who does the beginner version in the DVD. That’s one reason I like this series: You can always do the beginner version on days when you aren’t quite up to snuff.