What Should Go in a First Aid Kit?

[Szdfan]

I got bit by a dog last week.

I wasn’t bit badly, but the dog broke skin. I’ve been do the doctor, got my tetanus booster and just finished antibiotics. The dog fortunately is up to date on its vaccination and is under home quarantine for ten days.

The thing was, I didn’t have a first aid kit and so my daughter bandaged me up with Minions themed bandaids until I got to the doctor.

So I bought a first-aid kit at Walmart, but I’m not sure it’s sufficient.

Also, yesterday I was in Pueblo for my daughter’s dentist appointment. It’s about 1.5 hours from where I live. Over lunch, my daughter suddenly complained she wasn’t feeling well. So I went to Walmart and bought a thermometer. She ended up being okay.

So two questions:

1) What do you recommend that a comprehensive home first-aid kit should have. I’m about to move to a rural community that’s even more isolated than the one I already live in, so pre-planning is more important, because I can’t just run to the store.

2) What do you recommend for a first aid kit for my car? Should I carry a thermometer in it? This won’t be as comprehensive as my home kit, but what are the essentials for the road?

3) Should I carry a minimal kit in my regular bag? What should it include? Is this overkill?

Thanks.

[barnhart]

For bandages bigger than a bandaid I like hockey tape better than the actual medical tape. It also works well in conjunction with bandaids.

[Neto]

It was a requirement in Brazil that every vehicle had a medical kit. I may not recall everything that it included, but medical bandage tape, gauze, disinfectant, a scissors, and what else?.... (Oh, I think it also had ready made 'butterfly bandages', a quick substitute for needle & thread. But they are easy to make with nothing more than medical tape.)

But our 'medical kit' in the village also included things like several medical books (one which included instructions on how to perform minor surgery), local anesthesia, surgical needles and thread for sewing up wounds, and all kinds of medications, including antibiotics, penicillin, malaria treatment, snake bit kit, etc. So it depends on where you might need it.

[If you would like to have a medical book on hand, I would suggest Where There is No Doctor, available in various languages.]

[R7ehr]

I got bit by a dog last week.

I wasn’t bit badly, but the dog broke skin. I’ve been do the doctor, got my tetanus booster and just finished antibiotics. The dog fortunately is up to date on its vaccination and is under home quarantine for ten days.

The thing was, I didn’t have a first aid kit and so my daughter bandaged me up with Minions themed bandaids until I got to the doctor.

So I bought a first-aid kit at Walmart, but I’m not sure it’s sufficient.

Also, yesterday I was in Pueblo for my daughter’s dentist appointment. It’s about 1.5 hours from where I live. Over lunch, my daughter suddenly complained she wasn’t feeling well. So I went to Walmart and bought a thermometer. She ended up being okay.

So two questions:

1) What do you recommend that a comprehensive home first-aid kit should have. I’m about to move to a rural community that’s even more isolated than the one I already live in, so pre-planning is more important, because I can’t just run to the store.

2) What do you recommend for a first aid kit for my car? Should I carry a thermometer in it? This won’t be as comprehensive as my home kit, but what are the essentials for the road?

3) Should I carry a minimal kit in my regular bag? What should it include? Is this overkill?

Thanks.

Sounds like your car kit should have a semiautomatic handgun in case you again encounter a mean hound.

[temporal1]

tweezers
small scissors and/or small pocket knife
water
rope

matches

[JohnH]

Ask your nearest prepper. They will give you a long list of things to buy and be more than glad to share their opinions.

Then you can save a bunch of money by not buying the weapons on their list.

(For additional savings, just keep your prepper friend nearby; when you need something, ask him if you can borrow one of his tools. You'll be amazed what he produces from his pockets: I've seem allen keys, surgical style scissors, screwdrivers, a Buck style hunting knife, and a SIM removal tool all produced when I needed one.)

[barnhart]

Antibiotic ointment seems to have gone out of style. The last time I went in to be stitched up they did no antibiotic treatment at all, just let it bleed out, washed it with sterile water and closed it up.

[ohio jones]

Antibiotic ointment seems to have gone out of style. The last time I went in to be stitched up they did no antibiotic treatment at all, just let it bleed out, washed it with sterile water and closed it up.

Same with hydrogen peroxide. Cleveland Clinic says it has fallen out of favor as a wound cleanser. "It irritates the skin and can prevent the wound from healing. Essentially, it can do more harm than good."

[sojourner]

Antibiotic ointment seems to have gone out of style. The last time I went in to be stitched up they did no antibiotic treatment at all, just let it bleed out, washed it with sterile water and closed it up.

Same with hydrogen peroxide. Cleveland Clinic says it has fallen out of favor as a wound cleanser. "It irritates the skin and can prevent the wound from healing. Essentially, it can do more harm than good."

Well, I suppose I'm not as qualified as the Cleveland Clinic but hydrogen peroxide has worked pretty well for me. Every once in a while I have a scratch that's starts to become infected. I scrape it open and wash it out with peroxide. Never fails to clear up the infection.
Some folks make the mistake of using it repeatedly over the course of days as if it's a salve or something. That is known to prevent healing.

[Soloist]

Wife: I will do the car first. I think it would be helpful for you to have ibuprofen and or Tylenol in there. I don’t know that the thermometer is that big of a deal because you can usually feel if they are sick, but you can always have one in there. I personally think an antihistamine if there’s a remote chance of them having allergies, and I’ve also found that it’s helpful with miserable ant bites or bee stings even if you don’t have a proper allergy. At least have it at your house, and I would recommend something nondrowsy, possibly in addition to drowsy. Cough syrup is always useful at home.

Water is pretty important in the car, and maybe bring some easy food along with you just in case anyone decides they are in the mood to barf, as well as something for them to do it in and maybe spare clothes. Also, wet wipes and paper towels are always useful.

I personally would have some sort of antibiotic cream. I kind of liked the ones with pain relievers, because that was really nice when I ended up scraping up my knees horribly at the Costco parking lot a good distance away from our place. Maybe some rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, although I think peroxide has done out of style. I did actually buy some a couple days ago when we were out fishing because it had a nice spray bottle at the Dollar tree. Also grabbed antibiotic cream and Band-Aids, because I had realized that a couple of my children had cuts on their feet while they were wading at the fishing spot and did not want them to get infected.

If there’s any chance of you doing CPR on anyone, one of those cpr masks might be useful. They are teaching it without rescue breathing, because they just want people to be willing to do it, but the rescue breaths will definitely improve a person’s chances, and it will be less gross, and especially since they will likely barf.

Jump starter/tire inflator, and some flares. I think they actually sell kits so you can see what those include.

And whatever you do, don’t make my grandma mad by driving around in the fall through spring without a bunch of blankets in your car.