~JcZw

In all things medical, especially for doctors, is the phrase "First do no harm", or Primum non nocere in Latin. It means, sort of, that a doctor never does anything to harm the patient intentionally. Its something which we, or maybe just I, hold true as a first aider as well.

I remember telling my team once when I was an NCO that "everytime you make contact with a casualty, you risk injuring him more. The fact that you're a first aider lessens, but does not eliminate that chance". After all, you might displace a casualty's fractured shin even more when you're tying a figure-of-8 if you don't support the thing properly.

Maybe its a phrase which holds true not only in the physical treatment of a casualty, but in the handling of a person, or a group of people's situation. Or the way you talk to or advice someone. For the past week, after coming out from NS, after carrying on with fencing and St. John, I've had this feeling of "if I had done X instead of Y, then Z wouldn't have happened and group A of people wouldn't be feeling the way they're feeling". That's what my heart tells me. My head tells me that logically, there's no way you can make any drastic changes or improvements in, what, barely more than one week?

Or the feeling of "if I had said P, then the person wouldn't be feeling Q" and stuff, but "I don't know whether saying P is really making the person feel Q or whether its making the person feel R" and blahblah nuts I'm beginning to ramble.

Nuts being sensing instead of being intuitive. People think with their heads and hearts. I'm sometimes forced to follow gut feeling. And is it comfortable know that I'm following the instincts generated by a nervous impulse from my colon?

Oh heck. Don't know why I'm writing this either. Think sometimes, like always, I think too much. But compensating for a lack of intuition by thinking too much... well that just doesn't equate..

But anyway, it was nice to relieve some old and precious memories with Y. Li Ting today =) Ah sec 4 end year... a painful yet a very wonderful part of my life =)