P.A.R.T.Y. Program

The first time I heard of the PARTY program a year ago I thought it sounded cool and fun. Mind you, at the time I was only in grade 9, and I just heard reference to it over the announcments. Then, a week ago they had an assembly for all the grade 10s and they explained to us what the party program really is. It sounds cool, but that's only until you find out what the acronym stands for: Prevent Alcohol and Risk Related Trauma in Youth. It's a program that explains to us the consequences of driving while texting/drunk/high etc. and making smart choices in life and death scenarios. They briefly explained it at the assembly, but today, I got to go to the hospital to partake in the program itself. All the grade 10s were split into 3 groups to go on 3 different days. I got to go on day 1.

We got to the hospital and they took us into a conference room and talked to us a bit about the program to start with and then gave us some info. The program began about 20 years or so ago in Ontario in the hope of preventing alcohol related and other forms of preventable death in youth. A trauma doctor talked to us for a few minutes about some of the kinds of accidents he sees in the ER and he showed us some slides of crash scenes: cars wrapped around telephone poles; dead, unconscious or critical victims in the cars; a deer shoved through a windshield, it was very graphic.

We were then split into five groups to go see different stations they had set up for us at different parts of the hospital. First my group met with our school liaison officer and she told us about some of the crash scenes she's been to, the drunk kids she's found (and whose not-to-thrilled parents she's called) people she's caught DUI. She told us to make smart choices; if you're going to drink at parties, don't leave your drink unattended, have a designated driver in your group of friends, leave with the same people you came with, don't get in a car with a driver whose been drinking etc. She's really fun and we laughed a lot at how she told her stories, but I think we all got how serious it was. She also had goggles that made you see things like you were drunk when you put them on.

Next we talked to a paramedic who showed us a destroyed car that had rolled through a ditch (teenager going too fast in their new car) and he had a few horror stories of his own of things he'd seen. He showed us the equipment they have (spine board, stretcher, neck brace, breath pump, intibation tubes) and how they would assess a crash scene and use each piece of equipment. If your conscious during all that, it really wouldn't be comfortable. Then he told us that many crashes like that are very traumatizing physically to the body (no kidding!) and can leave you with a permanent brain injury or dead. Brain damage would be worse in some cases. He also elaborated on the importance of a helmet. If it's destroyed but your brain isn't, it did it's job.

A trauma nurse showed us a fake car crash patient (the "victim" was a grade 12 student from our school) and how they treat them. She showed us all the machines and tubes they hook you up to and explained how it all works, but I can't remember all the details, just that it was very unpleasant. She also said not to switch ID with your friends, because when the parents come and look at the kid and realize it's not their child that raises two big questions: who is this kid so they can call their parents, and where is the kid of these parents? She also showed us how they get drugs out when you overdose: either they give you a bottle of liquid charcoal to swallow, or if you don't cooperate they force you to swallow it. Basically it's a super fast laxitive and out come the drugs.

We went to the morgue, but we didn't see any dead bodies (though I heard another group did by accident) and the nurse there told us the absolute worst part of her job is having to bring parents down to the morgue to identify their children. It doesn't feel real she said, and they just stand and cry because there's nothing else to do. She said it's better for them to say good-bye in the hospital than in the morgue. And when you die in a trauma room it's not like on TV, where it goes all dark and everyone comes and stands around for a few hours. In real life they pack the body up tubes still atatched and send it straight off to the morgue because they need the room for the next patient.

We also listened to the tragic stories of 2 people who have suffered with living with brain injuries. It was so sad!! Here they were, just normal people, healthy, happy, active, who hadn't been drinking or on the phone and had their seatbelts on, and became the victims of other peoples mistakes. It was heartbreaking to hear!! The last activity we did was to try buttoning a shirt without the use of your hands (hard!!) and to try writing with the paper facing you, but you had to look in a mirror while you wrote and it all came out backwards. I can't imagine living like that. At the end they showed us some short videos about simulated car crashes and my God it was hard to watch that!! I couldn't watch parts of them it was so terrible.

I knew all of this already. I've heard stories and watched to news so I knew it all happened on a more or less regular basis but this just reinstated it all for me. It was actually scary and that's the whole point. When I learn to drive I will never text or talk on the phone even a hands-free, I will never be brought home drunker then Hell by the cops, I'll never take drugs of any sort (prescription meds. exempt) and I will never get in a car with someone who's been drinking. My life's just not worth the risk. I have a bright, wonderful future ahead of me and I'm not about to screw it up now.