E40: Navigating Emergency Situations on the Homestead | Jake of Drumm Emergency Solutions
Preparedness is an important aspect of most homesteads, but it can be an overwhelming topic due to its multifaceted nature. Many of us have some level of food storage for our families, but what about things like safety and emergency medical care? Jake Drumm of Drumm Emergency Solutions has a passion for helping families prepare for a wide spectrum of crisis situations. He has a special word for homesteaders today to get you started in preparing for both short and long term medical crisis situations.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why emergency preparedness is important for homesteaders
- The most important supplies to have in your first aid kit on a homestead
- Moving beyond first responder skills and considering long-term emergencies
- Why and how to store information offline in case of internet outages
- Tackling one of the most common health crises: sepsis
- Addressing the issue of medical supplies and medications in dire times
- Using wisdom in learning from various experts
- Encouragement if you are feeling overwhelmed or fearful
E42: The Importance of Salt for Humans and Livestock | Darryl Bosshardt of Redmond Incorporated – Homesteaders of America
About Jake
Jake Drumm is a career paramedic with a passion for preparedness, homesteading, and education. He has worked in all areas of emergency services medicine during his career. The past 15 years have been spent in the delivery of emergency medicine education, spanning the spectrum from graduate medical education to U.S. Special Operations medicine. He continues to practice medicine as a paramedic in rural East Tennessee, as well as working to actively spread his message of medical preparedness and austere lifesaving through Drumm Emergency Solutions, LLC, a family company. Jake is also heavily involved in ongoing wilderness medicine, permaculture, and homesteading projects on several properties in East Tennessee.
Resources
Medical planning and preparedness:
Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs)
Medical Beginner’s Resource List
Guerilla Medicine: An introduction to the concepts of austere medicine in asymmetric conflicts
Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures for Emergencies by Hugh Coffee
Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook
Improvised Medicine: Providing Care in Extreme Environments, 2nd edition
Tourniquet Conversion A Recommended Approach in the Prolonged Field Care Setting
Preparing for Operations in a Resource-Depleted and/or Extended Evacuation Environment
Skills for non-medical team members
Connect
Jake Drumm of Drumm Emergency Solutions | Website | YouTube | Facebook | X | Pinterest
Homesteaders of America | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Pinterest
Navigating Emergencies on the Homestead Transcript
Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.
Amy Fewell Welcome back to this week’s episode of the Homesteaders of America podcast. I have Jake Drumm with me this week. I was just telling Jake earlier, I think this is the most I’ve gotten to talk to Jake because whenever we’re at conference, Jake’s booth is like jam packed with people, especially after his lectures, and then I’m all over the place. And so I’m really excited to have Jake with this this week. So welcome to the podcast, Jake.
Jake Drumm Thanks. Thanks for having me on. This is pretty exciting.
Speaker 1 Yeah. So, Jake, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Because I’m sure not everybody knows who you are and what you do.
Jake Drumm Yeah. So I’ve got kind of an interesting story, but in a nutshell, I’m just a regular dude. Started in Indiana, I’m in East Tennessee now. We’ve been here about 20 years. My medical background is I’m a retired paramedic. I’ve kind of worked in every paramedic role that there is to have out there — ambulances and aircraft and hospitals, etc. Nowadays, really for the last 14, 15, I guess maybe like 17 or 18 years, I’ve been pretty heavily involved in medical education. I have a company, we do a lot of medical education. That’s kind of what brought us to Homesteaders of America. And I also farm full time so like a lot of folks out there, I’m trying to grow stuff and raise stuff. And right now we’re cutting hay, which, you know, everybody knows is a good time. So this is my little break from haying right here. I’ve got a couple of kids that are grown. My son works for me full time on the farm. I’m married, my wife’s a schoolteacher. Just normal, regular American dude, I guess.
Amy Fewell Well, that’s awesome because we love normal, regular American people. And that’s why you’re part of HOA. For those of you who don’t know, Jake is one of our speakers and has been for the last couple of years. And I was just talking to Jake before this about an event we’d like to do next year, so you guys stay tuned for that if it’s something we end up doing in regard to health and wellness and kind of being your own doctor at home. But Jake and I actually met, I think it was when we were holding Tennessee Events. Is that right, Jake?
Jake Drumm That’s correct. Over there in Columbia.
Amy Fewell Yeah. And so I remember at the time, I believe one of my security guys came running up to me. He’s like, “You got to check this guy out. He’s awesome. He knows what he’s talking about. You need to get him as a speaker.” And so that’s kind of how we made that connection. But I wonder what led you to this industry, Jake. You know, what do you teach people now? What is your passion right now, especially in regard to the Homestead community?
Jake Drumm So this kind of dives into my background. You know, I lovingly say that my parents were hippies and I was kind of raised by hippies, and that’s mostly true. You know, they were doing all the regenerative kind of organic farming, recycling and all that stuff long, long, long before it was cool. And so I was raised into that and then sort of fell face first into the medicine thing years ago. And so my wife and I have always grown a lot of our own food, you know, fed the kids the home grown vegetables, all the things. And as I got involved in the medical education side, you know, a lot of folks in my role focus on law enforcement, EMS, fire, those sorts of things. There’s a lot of people out there doing that stuff and that’s great because we need it. But, you know, I’m trying to be a farmer out here and I’m like, well, you know, what organizations are out there? So I start looking around. That’s really how I came across Homesteaders of America. I was like, well, you know, I’ll hit these guys up. I’ll go be a vendor at the show and kind of see what happens and what the reception is. And lo and behold, just from that kind of first exposure, you know, realized that it’s obviously a huge movement and, you know, a big deficit in that movement for people trying to be more prepared to take care of their families. You know, having a contingency plan is kind of the medical planning side and sort of providing at least first aid and kind of those initial steps. So, you know, that is probably the best explanation of my drive towards kind of the homestead crowd. Done a lot of conferences across the country. There’s obviously a lot of folks out there doing this kind of thing from a lot of different angles. It’s always good reception. People are hungry for knowledge. People want to be able to take care of themselves. They want to be able to take care of their families. And so, you know, I’m just trying to share my experience from all of my varied work environments, you know, no different than a lot of other folks that you have associated with the organization.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So one of the things that Jake teaches most years (I think we’re switching it up just a little bit this year) is basic things that most people don’t know. So like, how do you get to the hospital if you have a gaping wound, you know, or if the hospital is nowhere near, you know, if you have a tractor accident or a farm accident and, you know, you have this traumatic experience, what do you do? And so, Jake, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the most common things that people should really know in farming. Maybe like the top three things that you would recommend people learn as they continue to farm and might run into some crisis situations on their homestead.
Jake Drumm Yeah. I’ll tell you, one of the things we see a lot here in East Tennessee — tractor accidents. I grew up in Indiana. Like that’s all we do in Indiana, is pretty much grow stuff. So tractor accidents are very widespread. Not just tractors, you know, all implements out there, everything that moves, and the most common thing that I see to this day, like nobody wears their seatbelt. Nobody has that ROPS bar, you know, put up. And so this year, I know of two fatalities we’ve had. Both fairly young folks just in the counties surrounding us, and it was as simple as they were out working on the tractor and the tractor tipped over, and now they are no longer farming because they’re dead. So, you know, having the ROPS bar up, having the seatbelt applied. I see animal injuries. We have a lot of cattle around here. A lot of people raise cattle. You know, cows can be wild. We had an old guy just this past fall that, you know, had this bull for years and years, like him in the bull are Buddies. And for whatever reason, in a barn, the bull decided he didn’t like the old guy anymore, and that was the end of that. You’re never going to win that argument.
Amy Fewell No.
So you know, and then there’s the normal stuff, right? So for some reason, I love to get splinters. So, you know, splinters and cuts and burns. You know, we’re constantly refilling the tractor when the tractor is super hot. We’re underneath the diesel tank pumping diesel into the tractor. You know, everything around us is flammable. You see lots of TikTok and Instagram videos of tractor fires. So it’s really the basic trauma stuff and luckily I guess, most of these injuries are generally not life threatening and they can be managed. And my, I guess, shtick, and when I first started my business, you know, I kind of took the byline of do you want to MacGyver that, right? Because I am the guy out there putting duct tape on giant gashes and, you know, rubbing dirt on burns and scrapes. That’s not the best way. So, you know, I like to kind of dig into that a little bit deeper. And even if you don’t have to go to the hospital, it sure would be nice if you didn’t end up with an infection a week later that needs I.V. antibiotics, which is super sucky.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So we don’t have to do a comprehensive list, but what are some items that you think that people should keep on hand, like in a medical bag that could potentially be life saving or even just for the everyday basic things?
Jake Drumm I mean, if you’re working a farm, everybody should have a tourniquet. You know, one tourniquet probably two tourniquets. You know, I talk about this in my talk, I talk about this everywhere I go. And, you know, across the country right now with the Stop the Bleed movement and kind of getting schools and churches and stuff prepared for the violence that has been seen, the tourniquet thing is something that has transitioned from the military that is proving to be a life saver on the civilian side. If you’re running a tractor, running implements, you know, it’s not hard to lose a limb. And if you’re out there by yourself and you lose a limb, chances are you’re going to bleed to death before you fumble around and find yourself some rescue. And, you know, having the tourniquet — small, convenient, useful. I’m a big fan of hemostatic gauze. So, quick clot gauze. That whole technology has come a long way. The products out there now are top notch. They work very, very well. All this stuff kind of builds off the idea of self-rescue. So, you know, the tourniquet, the hemostatic gauze, something to wrap that up with — an ace wrap. And, you know, maybe a foldable modular splint, so a SAM splint. A lot of folks have seen those. You know, you break your leg, you can at least get that thing on yourself, provide a little stability. I like to build all of my teaching and kind of thinking preparedness-wise on these topics around a story I heard about a farmer. It’s kind of out there. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But there’s an old guy. He’s out farming. Gets hurt on his tractor. He breaks his femur. So this guy, you know, doesn’t have a cell phone signal. He has a cell phone with him. He crawls by himself like two miles to where he has a cell phone signal. He calls 911. There is no ambulance. Helicopter finally shows up. Flight paramedic gets off, you know, gets this guy. He’s got a broken femur. And all this guy is complaining about is how he’s got so much to do and, you know, needs to get back to farming. So we don’t think about taking care of ourselves.
Amy Fewell Yeah.
Jake Drumm You know, we generally don’t think about providing this level of care to our kids or our wives or, you know, extended family until we need it. But that kind of adding things like tourniquets and hemostatic gauzes to a basic first aid kit are super duper duper useful. You know, I’m going to dive into that a little bit more in my talk in October and lay all that stuff out. Just, you know, those little additions you can have.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Yeah, we just recently bought a massive medical kit for us based on a lot of your teachings at conference. And you guys, if you want to go back and see past years of Jake’s talks, you can actually do that in our HOA membership. They’re all recorded. You can go back and watch them because I can hear some of you my head now saying, “Well, how do I learn this stuff? I can’t come to conference.” And that’s readily available to you online that you can go back and watch his talks and we might post some on YouTube here and there in the future. But, you know, we just bought a medical kit, like a full paramedic kit, and it came. And so I’m an herbalist, so I know all of the herbalist things, but it was pretty intimidating to see all of these different instruments and how do you use them. So is that something that you teach, Jake? When people want to go just all in and get a paramedic’s bag and learn all these tools, is that something that you take on for people?
Jake Drumm Absolutely. So, you know, I offer a wide range of classes, everything from kind of two hour… Your basic Stop the Bleed class that we go into schools and teach and then the end of October, we’re doing a wilderness first responder class, which is about 50 hours of learning online. So online modules, get on there, discuss the material. You know, a lot of folks can’t break off 24 or 72… The whole course is 72 hours. So nobody has time to show up and do a 72 hour course. So about 50 hours of that’s done online, and then we do three days in person. And so when you think about using all that fancy stuff that’s in that bag, that level, of course is going to give you the biggest bang for the buck. There’s a lot of states, a lot of rural colleges out there now, that are offering EMT and what I’ll call first responder (they have a lot of different titles) but EMR classes. So it’s like one level below an EMT. You know, if you have the opportunity to take those classes… I know in Tennessee, if you don’t have a college degree, even if you’re 50 years old, you can go to one of the state schools and take the EMT class and the state will pay for it. So all you need to do is scrape up the time to do it. You don’t even need the money. So there are a lot of options. I have a whole kind of catalog of classes, you know, tactical classes, kind of the wilderness classes, more traditional medical certification classes that get into all aspects of that. And you’re right on the money — it’s important if you have a giant bag full of stuff that you understand what all of those things are, how they’re applicable to whatever the situation is that you need. I can’t tell you how many times I showed up to a scene as a paramedic, even the first responding agencies, you know, they of course have all these big bags and then show up to see the whole bag this dumped out on the ground. You know, no one trains with that stuff, no one’s familiar with what they have at their disposal. And so the more hands on you can get with that stuff, even if you’re just kind of walking through it, you know, tabletop drill in your kitchen, the better off you’re going to be.
Amy Fewell Yeah. So that brings me kind of to my next question. You were talking about the different courses that you have. And homesteading is, of course, different than EMTs or tactical training or things like that. But you know, me personally, I believe for what’s coming to the world in America, that these are skills that we’re going to have to have. And so I wonder if you might realistically speak into that. You know, what kind of things do you think we should know or how important do you think it is that homesteaders in general really start learning these skills in trades? Because we have a lot of people in our community that is ex-military or current military, and there’s a reason they’re coming into this community. And so could you speak to that a little bit, you know, encouraging people that there’s an importance in this. It’s not just fear mongering, you know, there’s a real skill behind this.
Jake Drumm Yeah. So you’ve heard my talks and you know that I don’t… I mean, we can go down a deep rabbit hole about craziness that may or may not be coming, right?
Amy Fewell You’re welcome to. We can handle it.
Jake Drumm Listen, I would love to do that and we will do it some time. But, you know from listening to my talks that I build everything around a natural disaster model. No matter what, you can rest assured that some natural disaster will befall some place in the country. So, you know, we all were here for Covid. That is still a hot topic to this day. What we know concretely is that Covid, as an ideal, as sort of a large scale practice scenario, proved that reliance on our current health care system is maybe not the best thing ever. Now, that is not a knock on the doctors and that is not a knock on the nurses. If anybody, it’s a knock on the administrators and the government and the way medical care was managed through that crisis. But, you know, people could not get medical care for anything other than their respiratory distress. Well, that’s a problem if you’re busy dying, you know, if you’re having a heart attack, if you’re having anaphylaxis, if you’ve been injured in a trauma. So being able to manage some of this stuff, at least for the near term, while you’re working to get care, because hopefully care is always available. Maybe just postponed. That’s your best case scenario. The flip side of that is… So in talks before, I’ve tried to tie together kind of the… We’ll just call it the the herbalism medical movement and traditional allopathic medicine, which is technically what I talk about, you know, and find some middle ground. You know, my parents — hippies. Like my grandparents grew up in hollers in southwest Virginia and West Virginia. So, you know, I’ve got some cool articles I should share with you about my… Would have been my great great grandfather, who was this “known” kind of herbalist witch doctor dude.
Amy Fewell Wow.
Jake Drumm Up in southwest Virginia. So, you know, the herbal thing I’ve been around my whole life and there is a lot of use for those things. And so when you think about preparing for what may be coming, you know, prevention is the best medicine. As cliche as that statement is, not getting sick, not getting hurt, is the very best way to deal with illness and injury, right? And herbalism plays a massive part in that. It also transitions in to when we start taking care of acute issues that may arise and that can be trauma, that can be, you know, some illness, whatever the source may be. At some point, you have to look at some of the allopathic medical technology. You know, as much as I like plantain, plantain is not going to make your femoral artery stop bleeding.
Amy Fewell Right.
Jake Drumm Like, you have to deal with that. And much of trauma care is a very hands on sport. So, you know, if you’re not used to dealing with kind of gross, crazy things, you need to think about that. You know, if you don’t have the equipment to deal with those things, you need to think about that. And then there’s the issue with the ambulance deserts. I’ve mentioned that my talks in the past, you know, there are places where ambulances are not available. You know, it might take five, six hours to get an ambulance or an aircraft if you should need to call one. You have to be ready to kind of self-evac in those scenarios, if there’s some place to evac to. But then the crux of my talk that I’ve given the last couple of years is, well, what happens if I can’t do all those things? Like things have just gone sideways and at that point, it doesn’t even matter what made things go sideways. Things are sideways. I have to take care of this person. Well, you know, we’re into it for 15 minutes. What does the next 72 hours or one week look like? How do I take care of this patient? So, you know, that is a skill set all its own. And you’ve heard me say in talks that, you know, I talk to folks who have community groups like, full on freaking prepper compounds, the whole deal, and they’re like, “Oh, well, you know, we got Bob over here and he’s an emergency medicine doctor. We got Sally over here and she’s an ICU nurse.” Awesome, great asset. However, those people really are limited in what kind of care they can provide outside of their traditional structure. So when you take Sally out of an ICU and you give her a hand bag full of stuff and you’re like, “Take care of this patient for a week,” that’s not something Sally does or is used to doing. You can have the world’s best trauma surgeon up in the holler living with your group, right? Well, if he doesn’t have a way to sterilize things and he doesn’t have instruments, he’s not really any more useful than your cow, honestly. You know, a lot of knowledge there and can help with the planning. So if you have these folks involved in your groups, you need to be thinking about, well, what do they need to do to take care of the community? You know, what supplies do they need? What pharmaceuticals are available? Like, can we source those? Can you store them? You know, medical planning in the sense that we’re talking gets real deep real fast. Now, the military, they’ve worked out a lot of this stuff and there’s a lot of information out there to help with kind of austere preparedness — resources, information, you know, I know that Nick talks about a PACE plan and some of the other guys that talk about security around the homestead, they talk about PACE plans. PACE plans are not just for security or, you know, like one individual thing. That whole primary kind of planning can be applied to everything, medicine included. I get into that in these talks, you know. But that’s what you need to be thinking about now. So a lot of people do this… I’m not picking on the fish antibiotic people out there. What I like to get people to understand is if you have strep throat and it’s terrible and you can’t see a doctor, yes, you might be able to figure out how to treat your strep throat with your fish antibiotics. However, if you are septic, and you are sick, you might as well just hit the person in the head with the fish antibiotics. You need I.V. antibiotics. Well, in the absence of I.V. antibiotics, what exactly is your plan? How are you going to support that septic person? So sepsis and kind of death by trauma through uncontrolled hemorrhage are two of the leading causes of death in the population between one and about 50 out there. So if you’re working on the homestead, you never plan to leave the holler again, chances are one of those two things has a high likelihood of killing you. So if you’re going to plan for something, we should plan for septic emergencies. We should plan for trauma. How do I deal with those two things? And then can you get the stuff to deal with it? Can you deal with a wound that you’ve put a tourniquet on farther on down the line? Because throwing the tourniquet on is the first, you know, two minutes.
Amy Fewell Right.
Jake Drumm And then. And that’s where most first aid care education stops, and it’s because we have this great safety net. You know, the health care system in the United States, even with all of its problems, is certainly one of the best in the world. So we all benefit from that. We have that luxury of that giant safety net around us at all times, generally speaking. What happens if it’s not there? If we see another pandemic that’s a real pandemic with a real mortality rate, going to the hospital is out of the question. The last thing you want to do is go to the hospital. You want to not be around people that have whatever contagion that could be. And it can be other things. I mean, war can come to the United States. Like missiles can fly here. We can experience a Ukraine like life, right? Nobody thinks about that because it’s never really happened. And as tragic as 911 was, right? We celebrated the anniversary yesterday. Horrible, still very isolated event. Like it affected everybody psychologically, but in terms of the actual effects to the population — negligible. Well, you know, we can see something much larger than that. I mean, you know, right now you have the Ukraine that’s actually attacking into Russia. So Russia’s a huge country and now they are dealing with some of those things that they haven’t dealt with since World War II. So, a lot of things to plan around. You know, my general advice for people is to sit down and evaluate your own situation and start there. So, you know, if it’s two adults and two kids, you got the sole family of four, you sit down, you do your little SWOT analysis, right? Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and you work out from there. You know, you do that with your food supply, you do that with your water supply, you do that with your security of your house, your apartment, your homestead, whatever you got, and you do that with your medical planning. You know, do we have Band-Aids? Yes. Do we have some tourniquets? Well, I don’t know. Do we have something to take care of sick people? Like, can I bring down a fever? You know, what do I do if I have to give someone fluids who cannot drink? The difference between refusing to drink and cannot drink. Like, you know, if your kid’s got a fever and doesn’t want to drink, you can make your kid drink. Right? But what happens if your kid is unresponsive? That’s a different problem to solve. There are answers for all those problems. There are tried and true techniques for all of these problems but you really want to learn that stuff, at least some of it, ahead of time.
Amy Fewell Yeah.
Jake Drumm Even if it’s just as simple as, okay, well, when I need this answer and the internet is not available, what do I do? Right? So I know it drives my wife crazy. I buy a lot of books. Like, I have a lot of books. Now every single day, I read on my Kindle because it’s convenient and I like reading on my Kindle, but listen, all the books that matter are not on my Kindle. Like they are printed on paper, like, with me. Right? And I kind of keep them all together. I’m always diving into a book. I wear out the Internet for my research just like everybody else, but the Internet is like one millisecond away from not being available to you. So unless you burn your house down, you’re always going to have your books. So, you know, I really, really, really encourage, even stuff you go on some of the websites I suggest in the talks, find those articles. Spend the money on the expensive printer ink, print the articles, put them in a binder. Old school, like, mother new style. I still have the binders from my mom and dad. You know, they got the magazines, they cut out the stuff they wanted, they put it in little sleeves, stuck in the binders. So the technology thing is awesome, but seriously, temporary at best.
Amy Fewell Yeah. Very, very fragile. I mean, it’s seriously an idol unfortunately in our country because any time I ever mention, you know, the Internet possibly going down and how close we are to that… I mean, look at today. Like you and I both and our podcast producer, none of our Internet is working well. And part of that’s because we’re in rural America. But the other part of that is that it’s just junky anymore, even at best. And so people don’t like to think about those things. We don’t like to think about those things because it creates fear in people. And so one of the things I like to tell people is this is why we have people like Jake on. This is why we have people like Jake at conference, because you can learn to take the fear out of these things by actually educating yourself, not dependent on the Internet. And when we become so dependent on the Internet, just like we’ve become so dependent on our health care system, there is fear because we no longer understand the basis of normal everyday things that our ancestors understood. And so I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, Jake. You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to, but you mentioned sepsis and fever. Could you kind of talk about those two things? I feel like that’ll kind of take a while to unpackage, but what would be your plan to prepare for something like that? You know, you mentioned antibiotics, too. Well, what’s the best way for people to get their hands on pharmaceuticals in advance?
Jake Drumm Yes. Those big questions that people ask me at shows and I just smile and nod at them. So sepsis is a huge deal. And so one of the parts of my talk that I give and I say it for every slide, despite the fact that most of my slides have nothing to do with infection. You can’t be kind of too clean in the sense that you should always be thinking about the fact that the world is trying to kill you. Not the people in the world. The natural world wants to kill you and eat you. No different than we want to like kill our carrots and eat them or kill our pig and have some bacon, right? So all the microbes around you are operating essentially at the same basic level that your little reptile brains operating on and they want you for a snack. And so those are the things that make us septic. And it can be anything from, you know, I’m out here shucking corn or picking corn, and I cut my finger and I just don’t get it clean enough, and I get some staph infection set up in there, and of course, I’m busy and I’m not paying attention, and I let that infection kind of go, you know, and it starts moving up my arm. Now you got this giant swollen hand and you got cellulitis and you have, you know, that leads to systemic sepsis and you find yourself in the hospital. I mean, that literally happens from some cause or another like, who knows, 100 times a day all around the country. Kids get sick. You know, kids get strep throat. Kids get a multitude of viruses. Kids get pneumonia. Kids are out running around, you know, step on something, poke themselves in the foot. They might not even tell mom and dad. You might not even know about the foot injury until, like, the foot looks like it needs to be amputated. Well, what do you do then? You know, you get lots of abscesses that way. Those abscesses have to be open. They have to be drained. It’s all stuff that takes specific equipment. Most people that I know are not prepared whether you numb that abscess up or you just decide to go at it with a clean knife that you have. Most people are not prepared to disinfect an abscess, numb that abscess up, open that abscess, clean it appropriately. What do I do after that, right? If it’s a big abscess, that abscess needs to be packed with Special gauze, has to be cared for every 12 or 24 hours. Like something so simple. I mean, you can get a splinter in up with a giant abscess, right? And it could take four, five, six weeks to deal with that thing. And then where do you get that stuff? The nice thing is most medical equipment is super easy to get. As convenient as Amazon is, I would caution people about buying their high quality medical equipment from Amazon because I promise you, most of the stuff you’re going to get is going to be some Chinese junk. And so that might not matter so much for a scalpel that you’re going to use one time, but it does matter for the other stuff. So, you know, everything from abscess packing gauze (Iodoform gauze is what it’s called. It’s basically just gauze with Betadine kind of soaked into it and some Vaseline, petroleum jelly), all those kind of things are available. You know, where we run into problems is, you know, I.V. medications obviously are tightly controlled, very difficult to get. They also generally have short shelf lives. So, you know, we talk about antibiotics a lot. Everybody’s always asking me about antibiotics. Here’s a deal with antibiotics — there is a narrow, narrow window or group of patients that need antibiotics.
Amy Fewell Yeah.
Jake Drumm We have never, really ever used antibiotics in my family. Like my kids managed to survive to their grown adult ages, rarely seeing an antibiotic. You know, I think my daughter might have had them once in her like 21 years. So everybody wants the antibiotics. They seem like the magic bullet. Even most run-of-the-mill strep infections will pass all on their own if you’re a healthy person. If you’re a two year old and you have a strep infection, that’s a different conversation. But if you’re like 14 and healthy and you get strep throat, manage the symptoms, hydrate, try not to give everybody else strep, you’re going to be fine. So the I.V. antibiotics that everybody wants, you know, obviously are delivered through an I.V. those happen with specific regimens. They’re very weight dependent. All of those answers can kind of be answered for anybody, but where do you get them, right? They’re prescription. There are a couple of companies out there now. I do not endorse Internet companies selling pharmaceuticals. However, there are a couple of companies that I would probably feel comfortable using where you can get on there and you fill out a little questionnaire that’s evaluated by that company’s physician and you can get a specialized pack of antibiotics to kind of cover if you’re going on a sailing trip through the Caribbean or you’re going to start a homestead out in the middle of Nebraska and there is no hospital for four hours. You kind of build it around your situation. Nowadays that stuff is much more available. It just takes a little bit to hop on Google, like type it in, those people are easy to find. Prices are not crazy. The key is understanding when to use it, you know? Most people aren’t sick from bacteria. They’re sick from a virus. Using antibiotics to try and treat your symptoms from a virus is only making your problem worse.
Amy Fewell Right.
Jake Drumm You know, and we could talk for days about what that does to your gut biome and, you know, the fact that those antibiotics are killing off all the other bacteria that you need to fight the virus that is busy making your life miserable, so I like to steer people away from that stuff. I feel like I’ve completely gone off track someplace with your question.
Amy Fewell I feel like you answered it perfectly.
Jake Drumm All right, good. So you can get the stuff, like the stuff is available. Are you going to be able to go out and find yourself some fentanyl lollipops and ketamine vials? I mean, you can. You can do it if you are persistent enough but the question is, do you want that? You know, do you want to be responsible for those level of medications? Do you or will you ever feel comfortable using that kind of medication? So, you know, ketamine and fentanyl — kind of two hot drug names out there right now. Fentanyl has a super bad rap because the Chinese and probably the Russians, a lot of other people that don’t like us, are shipping that stuff into our country to help us kill ourselves faster. Well, fentanyl as a short acting, kind of stable, safe narcotic for pain control is one of the best there is. What makes it good is knowing where your fentanyl came from, having the appropriate dosage, right? And knowing how that dosage applies to your patient and then being able to monitor your patient. So if I was out there working and I’m giving fentanyl to someone for pain control, well I also have them on like a pulse oximeter, right? And I probably have them on my ECG monitor and I’m watching all of their vital signs. Like I’m paying attention to my patient. I’m not just like jabbing them with fentanyl. Same thing with ketamine. Works great for sedation. The military uses the crap out of ketamine. Ketamine and fentanyl are on every ambulance in East Tennessee. Like the combination of drugs is super good. But again, with the ketamine, you know, those require a level of monitoring that most folks just don’t have. Now if you want to drop 20 grand, I can get you a sweet monitoring setup. Right? You can set up your own little mini ICU in your house, no problem. Outside of spending some serious money, you know, you’re not going to have those things. And so there’s plenty of folks that are skilled enough to provide bedside one on one care, monitor vital signs the good old fashioned way, and make sure that folks, you know, are tolerating whatever course of treatment is being provided to them. If you feel like that’s something you need to prepare for, this is when you need to start looking for some of these, you know, super deep end of the pool classes and get that education, you know, identify local nurses, local physicians who are willing to share the knowledge with you. Just as many nurses and doctors out there that have the homestead, you know, kind of preparedness mindset as the general population, and I know many of them. Now, they don’t talk about it. They do not want their health care administrators knowing that. Those people are made pariahs probably faster than any other segment of the population. We saw that with Covid, of course. So you can find them. They will answer your questions. The biggest piece of advice I would say is if you manage to get your hands on a seasoned medical professional and you want to ask questions, you need to think about your questions first. You know, a lot of those folks are very academic. So even if it’s like Bob from the holler, he did not make it through medical school and residency and go on to practice medicine because he’s an idiot. Like, he still has an academic mind. So when you ask questions, think about your question first. Try and answer that question for yourself. Take all of that, reformulate your question, and ask that to your medical professional, right? And this is where a lot of people feel like they get shot down by folks when they approach them. You know, can I have this drug? No. Well, you know, all you know about it is what you saw on the 30 second commercial while you were watching American Idol. So, you know, learn some stuff, educate yourself first. And that’s not me knocking people. I mean, when I was teaching at the medical school, this is exactly what we told the medical students. This is exactly what we told the residents. Don’t ask the first thing that pops into your head because you’re gonna look like a moron. Think about the question you have. Try and answer it and then ask the question. I mean, it’s the scientific process just sort of boiled down into question asking.
Amy Fewell Yeah. It’s critical thinking, which most of us lack nowadays in our country especially. You know, we have this conversation with our oldest son all the time. Like in order to make it, you have to have critical thinking skills. And, you know, a lot of this conversation you guys are listening to, it might sound overwhelming, but it’s really… I mean, it can be, but it’s not. I mean, it’s basic stuff. If you care enough about it, you’ll care enough to educate yourself about it, and then you’ll care enough to have an educational conversation with someone about it. And like Jake mentioned, there are a lot of groups that are popping up in the prepping world and the homesteading world where there are health care professionals that are part of these groups. Not publicly, but they are part of these groups because they are also… You know, they went through the pandemic. They went through all of these things. Some of them have seen mass casualty events and they know what’s coming or what could be coming. And so they are part of these groups where they want to help. And, you know, we’ve had conversations with people like this, too, like most of us think about, you know, nurses and doctors, but what about dentists and chiropractors.
Jake Drumm Seriously.
Yeah, I mean, you can get septic just from a tooth infection, you know, so there’s so many aspects to this. And I know that we also have medical professionals that listen to this podcast. I talk to them, I hear from them. And so my encouragement to everyone, whether you’re a medical professional or not, is to start cultivating this relationship. Start networking with each other in safety. You know, don’t trust everybody. Not everyone is your friend. Not everyone’s supposed to be in your camp. I say this all the time — we have to use discernment. We have to use wisdom. But if you have a friend that is trustworthy, start having these conversations because (you know, one day I might get in trouble for saying this) ultimately we have to create the system that we feel safe with. And we can’t always depend on the health care system. Just like we learned really fast we can’t depend on the food system. We can’t depend on any government system to take care of us when that time comes. And so like Jake said, whether it’s a natural disaster or you live in the middle of nowhere and there’s no access to health care, or whether, God forbid, something does happen in our country and we’re all on our own. I mean, that’s crazy to think about, but we want to equip you guys in this education and knowledge so that you can be prepared not in fear, but in wisdom. And so if you’re coming to the conference this year, I really encourage you to check Jake’s talk out. And like I said, I’m so passionate about this in regard to health care just because I am an herbalist and, you know, study in naturopathy and all of these things that we really hope to have an event just for this the beginning of next year, but we’re still in the planning stages of that. And so if so, I’d love to have Jake come and kind of teach those things to you guys. But we’ll update you guys more and more on that as it comes. But Jake, I’ve kept you for long enough. I know you have other things to do, especially since you’re making hay. Always at the end, I always open up the floor. If you could say anything to our audience or if there’s just anything that you’re really burning to say in general, the floor is yours now. So please feel free to do that.
Jake Drumm So the two things I would add, just kind of to play off of stuff that you’ve already said during our little talk here. The first one is being overwhelmed. So not everybody came from a rural background and knows how to grow a tomato. Not everybody, you know, came from a medical background and knows how to take care of a medical problem. I did not get here overnight. So, you know, I’ve been doing this since about 1992, 93, and that’s been a continual learning process. You know, I’ve been learning how to raise organic vegetables and take care of animals since I was old enough to walk and be outside, and I just turned 50. So it’s been a long process. I already talked about my books. Every day I have my nose in a book. Every day I’m asking a question. You know, I’m looking for an answer, I’m trying to find some subject matter expert. Be careful with those subject matter experts. I encourage everybody to question and vet every single thing that comes out of my mouth. I’ve even taught my kids this. And believe me, that has been quite infuriating over the years. But I want my kids to question every word that pops into their head. You know, I don’t want them just taking someone’s word for it. Now, they know they can trust me and I’m sure most of the time they do. But I’m like, “Listen, if I tell you something and you think I’m completely insane, by all means research it and let’s have a discussion.” You know the critical thinking, the questioning, you know, the true scientific process of kind of being alive and finding answers is something that’s been bred out of all of us. So, you know, don’t get frustrated when you’re out there trying to learn this stuff. It’s going to take time. You’re never going to know everything. I mean, you know, I go and work with folks all the time who are younger than me, have less experience and like 100 times smarter. You know, and so I’m in teaching a class and I have students who I’m just like, why am I the one talking? Like I should sit down and shut up and just listen to you guys talk. So do that. You know, find a lot of information, vet that information. The next thing I would talk about is the fear thing. When I first started going out, having these talks, the last thing I want to do is stand up there and cause someone’s fear to be greater than it was. It’s not about that. You know, early on when I started in EMS, you know, you get called to all these crazy calls. Like I was just a kid. I had no idea what I was doing. You know, I had some very rudimentary schooling and they gave me some stuff in this crazy truck and they’re like, “Go forth and do something,” right? Well, I’m like petrified every time that you get a call. You know, it’s 3 a.m. You just got woke up and you’re responding to an 18 month old that’s not breathing. Okay, well, as scary as that is for the parents, like the two people coming to help you are terrified.
Amy Fewell Yeah.
Jake Drumm Right? I mean, you’re walking in to this, like, massive crisis. So one of the things that I’ve had to learn is to control my own fear, control my own anxiety, control my own panic. And so, you know, at the time when I was working on the truck, fire department, ambulance, the whole deal, you know, going to that call, I’m like basically talking myself down. I need to be the calmest person in the room. I need to be detached. I need to be able to do my job. And a lot of folks who work out there in medicine do that. You know, the thing I would sure that up with is like every other page in the Bible talks about, “Do not be afraid.” You know, it’s basically the thing that’s most mentioned. So if you lean on the religious side of things, if you got your Bible there in front of you, go ahead and fact check me. But, you know, God, for whatever reason, probably knowing that we were a bunch of bozos down here was like, “Hey, there’s scary stuff. Don’t worry about it, right? Just don’t do it. Like you’re wasting your time. Worry about something else.”.
Amy Fewell Yeah.
Jake Drumm So, you know, that’s something that I’m constantly telling my wife, constantly telling my kids, “You can turn on the news any time and find a hundred things to be terrified about. Awesome. Like, you can walk off your front porch and trip and fall and break your neck and be dead and you’re not currently afraid of that, so don’t worry about it.” You know, it’s easier said than done. It’s like a constant daily practice. But, you know, that’s what I would leave people with is regardless what your mission is, what you’re trying to do, when that fear creeps in (and it will) you just got to like grab by the throat, stick it back in the corner. Like it’s not helping you.
Amy Fewell Yeah. And you brought up the Bible. You know, the Lord gives us the peace that surpasses all understanding and so if you are a believer and going into this, we do have hope. We do have peace in his ability, which is much greater than our ability. And listen guys, he will give you the knowledge and the wisdom to accomplish these things. He puts people like Jake in place to educate us physically, right? And to take the fear out of things physically. And so Jake, I’ve really enjoyed having you on today. I know that people are just going to love this podcast. I’ve listened to it and might even listen to it again to learn some things. And so we just thank you for joining us this week, Jake. And guys, we thank you for listening to the HOA podcast. We have more coming up for you. Check us out online. All of the information that Jake has talked about is in the show notes of this podcast, whether you’re watching on YouTube or on podcast streaming platform. And if you have any questions, as always, you are welcome to ask them either by email or on our YouTube channel. And we just thank you guys so much. Jake, once again, thank you for joining us this week.
Jake Drumm Thanks for having me, Amy. Appreciate it.
Amy Fewell Absolutely. All right, guys. Until next time, happy homesteading.
Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.
