Thursday night we headed out to the neighboring town of Palisade so I could participate in a training exercise for our local Search and Rescue team. I was to play the “victim” along with my “child”, a rubber dummy used for training purposes. So my very patient buddy, Amy, whose husband was running the training, took care of the kids at the park and I was hauled off on a boat up the river and dropped off on a tiny little island with my plastic child.

The scenario was that my 4 year old and I were rafting, lost control of the boat and made our way to a teeny island in the middle of the Colorado river. My child was breathing but unconscious and I was a diabetic with low blood sugar getting more and more agitated by the minute. This all lasted about 2 hours.

I waited for about 10 minutes before I saw an ambulance arrive on the riverbank and turned on the drama. I was waving and screaming, yelling that my son was unconscious and I didn’t know what to do. They were setting up a rope to “repel” across the river so it took about 10 minutes for them to get to me. All the while I was pacing through the mud, yelling at them to hurry. In the meantime a boat arrived with one of the rescuers and he started to take care of my “child.” I kept pacing around, walking out into the river to yell at the team on the bank and then back to yell at the S&R dude for not doing anything. He tried to manage me and get me to sit down while we waited for more medics to arrive. I ignored him and instead yelled more.

When more of the medics and S&R people arrived, some of them were sent to manage me while the others worked on the kid. I kept pacing and walking out in to the river to yell until an EMT got a hold of me and forced me to sit down. When she did that all I would focus on was my “son”. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. People kept standing in front of me and I fought and yelled and sobbed to see what was going on with him. All the while the EMT kept asking me questions about what happened, if he had any medical conditions, etc. She tried to do an exam of me too, but I fought her pretty hard. They finally determined that I had been wearing a life jacket, which I left on the other end of the island, so they sent someone to get it and forced it back on me.

I took that opportunity to fight them about the life jacket. I kept unzipping it, trying to take it off. And someone would zip it back up and patiently tell me that I needed to keep it on so I could be safe. Soon they loaded up the kid onto a back board and started moving him to the boat to transport back down the river to the waiting ambulance. At that point I went berserk. There were 3 people holding me back as I tried to get to my child as he was being loaded up. They did an amazing job of holding me back! I was fighting really hard.

When the boat left, I calmed down a little bit and the EMT was able to ask me some questions about my medical history. That’s when I let on that I was diabetic. I kept trying to stand up and when I finally got them talked into letting me, I made a run for the river. I didn’t get very far and they sat me right back down. I kind of collapsed onto one, acting like I was dizzy. At that point, they realized that my blood sugar was low and started searching around for some sugar to give me until the boat returned with more medical supplies. Someone brought me a bottle of water which I would only take sips of and they found a granola bar and told me that I had to eat it, which I refused. All the while I was fighting my life jacket. I would unzip it and someone would zip it back up, over and over and over again. I was screaming to be let go and sobbing. Finally two big dudes sat on either side of me and just held my arms so I couldn’t unzip my jacket. I kept screaming and sobbing.

When they loaded me into the boat it was decided that the biggest dude would go with me to keep me under control. During the river ride I stayed more calm, continuing to fight the life jacket and sobbing. The EMT in the boat took my blood pressure and gave me some imaginary insulin. We pulled to shore and I unzipped my life jacket and bolted out of the boat to the ambulance. Two people on shore grabbed me and held me back when Steve, who was running the scenario, called on the radio that there was a change in the scenario. At that point, with the big S&R dudes holding me back, I started laughing. Steve wanted some of his people to get some training swimming the river, so he said that now I jumped out of the boat and swam to shore and they had to go after me.

Back in the boat I climbed and was dropped off with one of the EMT’s on the shore to wait for the swimmers. They arrived and we all had a good laugh about how ridiculous I was, me assuring them that I’d never act like that in real life.

After it was all over, I couldn’t believe how exhausted I was! But I was really proud of the acting job I did, I wasn’t sure I had it in me. It was like I just entered into this trance like state and just played the part without really much thought to anything else or what was going on around me. I never realized how acting out an emergency could be so emotionally draining! I am also really impressed with Search & Rescue. They all volunteer their time and risk their safety to rescue people, many of whom are in bad situations just because they were being stupid (like rafting on the river without life jackets for your kids). I felt that as ridiculous as I was acting, they all handled me very well.

This was definitely an experience that I won’t soon forget!