Tools & Gear
MedCallAssist
By Ron Spomer
(product review)
Few things are more frustrating or frightening than getting sick during a hunting expedition if the middle of nowhere. And once you’ve traveled a day or two from home, you don’t have to camp in a wilderness to be in the middle of nowhere. Many hunts are a two-hour drive from the nearest medical clinic. Who wants to interrupt a hunt for a trip to the doctor?
With MedCallAssist you may not have to.
MedCallAssist is a service started by a doctor who also was a bush pilot in Alaska. He learned first-hand how inconvenient life is for sick or injured folks far from clinics. So he started MedCallAssist. Here’s how it works:
As a client, you provide your medical history to MedCallAssist. Then you tell them where you are going to hunt. Their doctors then build a custom “first aid” kit tailored to your needs. In addition to the usual bandages and aspirin, you might get three or six antibiotics to address a variety of bacterial infections. Your kit might harbor Flagyl to cure giardiasis. Or advanced pain killers lest you develop kidney stones; a cure for malaria or even HIV/Aids blocker should you come in contact with infected blood.
But that’s not all. With the kit you get a detailed but easily understood directions booklet PLUS – and here’s the best part – 24-hour phone consultation with emergency room physicians. It’s like visiting your doctor in person except for the laying on of hands part. You or one of your partners may have to do the salving, bandaging or stitching. Or you may be directed to head for a hospital. But at least you won’t be left guessing. Is this just a passing stomachache or the start of something deadly? MedCallAssist’s doctors can tell you.
Add a camera/phone to your arsenal and you can even get visual diagnoses. I sent a picture of a badly infected finger to MedCallAssist and they came back to me within minutes with welcomed instructions: I didn’t have blood poisoning and wouldn’t need to hustle back to civilization for treatment. They prescribed two antibiotics in my custom medical kit. And they called back the next day to see how things were progressing. Ditto the second day, by which time I was on the mend. I stayed in the field, my finger stayed on my hand and MedCallAssist became a permanent partner in my adventures far afield.
For more information visit www.medcallassist.com or call 877-257-7844