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Whether you’re a university student about to attend their first party, or a grownup with friends who sometimes party a little too hard, it’s good to know what to do when things get out of hand. Here are some of the top tips and skills that can help you help others.

Plan ahead for getting home and getting help

This is basic party safety: Know how you’re getting home, and who should be with you. Ideally you’ll come to the party with a buddy, and plan on going home together. This helps you find your way home, but also the two (or three, or four) of you can check on each other and keep each other safe.

If you’re at university, many schools have a phone number to call if you’re stranded on or near campus, or a “drunk bus” that can take you back home. Find out your options ahead of time, and make sure you have a safe way to get yourself and your possibly incapacitated buddy back to your respective beds.

You’ve also probably received some kind of pamphlet from the school about safety, with emergency numbers, resources and tips of various kinds. Take a picture of that pamphlet, and program the numbers into your phone, so you have that information when you need it. Take a photo of your health insurance card too, in case you end up at the hospital, and ask your friends to do the same.

Know the difference between ‘sleep it off’ drunk and ‘call 000′ drunk

It isn’t normal for somebody to drink a lot and then completely pass out. Now, it might happen fairly often, especially at the beginning of the semester on university campuses, but that doesn’t mean it’s a thing to shrug off. If you don’t know whether your friend is OK, call for help. On campus, there may be a rescue squad or campus security number to call; otherwise, you know how to dial 000.

Get help if your friend:

• Looks to be asleep, but you can’t wake them up
• Might be choking on their own vomit
• Is breathing very slowly

If you call for help, stay with them until help arrives, and tell the emergency responders whatever you know — how many drinks they had, for example. You won’t usually get in trouble.

If your friend can wake up and is breathing just fine, just help them get home safely. If you’re drunk too, find a sober person who can help. Put your friend into a recovery position on the floor or in bed, and have somebody stay with them.

Watch for injuries, and know first aid

Even if somebody only has a small amount of alcohol or drugs in their system, they can still put their life or health at risk because of the things they do while they’re impaired. Do your best to keep your drunk friends away from cars, water (alcohol is a huge risk factor for drowning) and other dangerous situations.

And keep an eye out for injuries. If somebody is bleeding or badly bruised, or looks as though they may have hit their head, it’s possible that they are more injured than they let on. Again, if you aren’t sure how badly hurt somebody is, call for help anyway.

Take a first aid course if you can. Some critical life-saving skills to know are:

• CPR, for when somebody’s heart isn’t beating or they aren’t breathing (you do CPR while somebody calls 000, and keep it up until the emergency responders arrive)
• How to stop bleeding in an emergency — tourniquets are good again!
• What to do if someone is choking (the Heimlich works, but there’s more you should know)

Know how to use naloxone

It’s important to know that a passed-out person might be overdosing rather than just drunk. Once again, if you don’t know, call 000 anyway.

A person who has overdosed on opioids (whether that’s heroin or somebody’s leftover pain pills) will be completely unresponsive, breathing very slowly (less than 12 breaths per minute), and often have blue hands and lips. Narcan or generic naloxone are easy to use if you have them handy.

If this is a situation you think you might encounter, it can be a good idea to have naloxone on hand or to find out whether there’s a kit available nearby. Jillian Bauer-Reese wrote at Slate that perhaps every student should go to school with naloxone and fentanyl test strips.

It’s up to you whether you think you might need them, but either way it’s always good to know what to do in an emergency and to be as prepared as you can be.

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GOLF-SIZED hail has hit parts of central Queensland, as wet weather continues across much of state, some parts seeing falls of up to 50mm.

Originally published as Hail size of golfballs smashes cars

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This article was copied and pasted from ABC NEWS and written by Jo Khan for Off Track, the ABC and Jo do not endorse Canberra First Aid we are just citing this article to give information to the community on sea snakes and show that we can help in training Australians in how to treat all snake bites.

Close your eyes and take the plunge. Imagine, diving into the ocean and coming face to face with the beady eyes and flicking tongue of a sea snake.

That’s just another day at work for PhD student Blanche D’Anastasi from James Cook University.

“I must have swum with thousands of snakes by now,” she says.

“They zoom right up to me and I think they’re checking if I’m going to try and eat them.”

Australia’s sea snakes are curious creatures, often wriggling out of their coral hidey-holes to say hello to unusual visitors.

“They will come and have a little look, and then go about their business,” Ms D’Anastasi says.

For a long time, sea snakes have slipped through the cracks of ocean — and reptile — conservation.

Now, scientists like Ms D’Anastasi are trying to understand why the marine reptile is mysteriously disappearing from some of our reefs.

Vanishing act

Hundreds of kilometres from the northern coast of Western Australia, lies an idyllic underwater wilderness.

Expeditions to Ashmore reef in the 60s and 70s revealed the area was home to more sea snakes — in species and in numbers — than anywhere else in the world.

A veritable hotspot of sea snake biodiversity, with over 10 different species all cohabitating on the same remote patch of protected coral reef.

Then, they were gone.

There was a glimmer of hope when two of the “extinct” species showed up on the Western Australian coast.

But no-one knew what caused them to disappear in the first place.

“We still don’t,” says Kate Sanders, an evolutionary biologist at Adelaide University.

“It could be to do with changing predator dynamics or disease,” says Dr Sanders, who has been studying Australia’s sea snakes for the past 10 years.

“We can rule out coral bleaching because we know that nearby bleached reefs maintained sea snake populations.”

Evolutionary marvels

The sudden decline of sea snakes at Ashmore Reef indicates the reptiles are vulnerable.

And scientists are concerned this decline may be happening on other reefs.

“We don’t know enough about existing populations of sea snakes to be able to detect declines in other locations,” Dr Sanders says.

When scientists began studying sea snakes in earnest, they soon realised there was a deep trove of evolutionary and ecological secrets to untangle.

For a start they are incredibly diverse, Dr Sanders says.

“[Some snakes] feed on burrowing eels, on fish eggs. Some species only dive to a few metres, while others dive past 100 metres. And some are [found on] blue water reefs, while others in inshore turbid environments,” she explains.

They also evolved quickly from their land-based cousins.

Roughly 10 million years ago, some of Australia’s most venomous terrestrial snakes started to transition toward a semi-aquatic, and eventually fully-aquatic lifestyle.

The tapered tail of the land-based snakes transitioned to a flattened, paddle-like tail allowing sea snakes to efficiently propel themselves through the water.

And while sea snakes retained the single body-length-long lung of their terrestrial counterparts, they also evolved the ability to supplement their oxygen intake through their skin so they could breathe when unde

But there are traits they still have in common with their land relatives.

“They do have big, fixed front fangs, a flip-top head like a python, and they are really venomous,” Ms D’Anastasi says.

So there goes a myth that they have little fangs and can’t open their mouths very wide.

But if you leave the snakes alone, they aren’t aggressive, she says.

Snakes and sensibility

The fast-paced evolution of sea snakes can also tell us a lot about how other reptiles evolved, says Jenna Crowe-Riddell who is a PhD student studying sensory evolution at the University of Adelaide.

“They are a great system for studying a comparative approach of evolution, including their sensory systems,” Ms Crowe-Riddell says.

All lizards and snakes have little bumps in varying sizes and numbers on their scales, called sensilla.

“They are in highest numbers on the head — some snakes can have up to 6,000 of these little organs — and they help them move through the world in a tactile way.

“They’re for sensing their immediate environment,” Ms Crowe-Riddell says.

However, it could be a different story for sea snakes.

“When you’re underwater there is potentially this new sense where anything in the water will generate a ripple or vibrations that can get carried through the medium,” she says.

When Ms D’Anastasi heard about this discovery it “rocked her world” because the sea snakes she encountered appeared to pick up her presence from very far away.

“Turns out you cannot sneak up on a sea snake,” she says.

Local conservation key

Scientists also need to know where sea snakes live, if they are going to try to protect them and prevent further declines.

Ms D’Anastasi has spent a lot of time hanging off the back of boats looking for sea snakes to take a scale sample from for DNA analysis to find out whether different populations of sea snakes are related.

“I looked at the DNA of Shark Bay sea snakes, and found that they don’t move far to breed.

“It means that if you’re doing a good job in your local management area, you’re doing the best job possible to protect those sea snakes,” she said.

Analysing the DNA of many different populations of sea snakes showed that they don’t overlap at all, and have very distinct genetic fingerprints.

“Once they’re gone, they’re gone for a really long time, if not for good,” Ms D’Anastasi says.

“We have to do well at a local scale so we don’t lose them population by population.”

Sea snake champions

A lot of people dislike snakes, and many people aren’t overly fond of the ocean, making sea snakes enemy number one for many — despite the fact they very rarely interact negatively with humans.

Scientists like Ms Crowe-Riddell are trying to give their image a makeover, and help people understand their complexities.

But another reason they have previously slipped through the cracks is that even scientists aren’t sure who should be studying sea snakes.

“Sea snakes often get ignored by herpetologists because they’re in the ocean and too hard to get to,” Ms Crowe-Riddell says.

“Or if you’re a marine biologist, you see them in the ocean but you might think ‘oh that’s a reptile’ and ignore them as well.

“So they kind of sit in this weird space and haven’t been as well studied.”

And, she says, learning about sea snakes has implications for more than herpetologists or marine biologists.

“If you want to know how animals change in response to major shifts in their environment, sea snakes are a really good group to study those big questions,” Ms Crowe-Riddell says.

Luckily for sea snakes, they now have a passionate team of scientists working hard to understand and protect them.

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Official patrols of New South Wales beaches will not start for another month, but swimmers and surfers are already being warned to take care this summer.

Thirty-nine people drowned along the state’s coast last financial year, up seven on the year before but still well below the year before that, when 53 people lost their lives to coastal drowning in NSW.

Even before the iconic red and yellow flags have gone up — the season starts on September 29 — crews have been called out to rescue a paddle boarder from the water at Bennetts Headland, near Forster on the mid-north coast.

Conditions were rough on Sunday afternoon because of a building southerly swell when reports came in that a paddle boarder was in distress off Bennetts Headland.

He was rescued by a crew from the Forster Surf Life Saving Club and checked over by paramedics before being released without injury.

Surf Life Saving New South Wales north coast manager Tony O’Mara said there was a simple message for the public ahead of the warmer months.

“People have just got to swim to their capacity, swim at patrolled beaches, swim with friends and just keep an eye out for each other,” he said.

“You’ve got to know what your capabilities are, that’s the most important thing and to reduce that risk, swim between the flags … but if you’re a surfer, just let people know where you’re going, don’t surf alone, surf with friends, and know your capabilities.”

Mr O’Mara is warning people to be aware conditions can change quickly, and they did not have to be far into the water to be caught in a rip.

Drones an important tool for surf lifesavers

Drones will again be used on the state’s beaches this summer to spot sharks and bait balls, but also to help rescue people in distress.

Last summer a drone was used in a world-first at Lennox Head, when just hours after it was unveiled it was used to drop a flotation device to two teenage boys.

A drone has also been used to assist in retrieving the body of a man who had drowned.

Mr O’Mara said plans for the deployment of drones were still being finalised, but they would be one of the tools available to lifesavers.

“The technology is allowing us to buy time so if you can get the drone out there, drop a pod, it provides time for the guys on the boards to get out there or an [inflatable rescue boat] to get out there and rescue,” he said.

“It’s one of the tools, it’s not the be-all and end-all because you’ve got to get that pod dropped at the right spot at the right time and people are fatigued, so that’s a harder one as well.”

He said drones were not only useful for helping people in distress.

“The drone just gets a wider area to view, particularly on our long beaches,” Mr O’Mara said.

“Our patrols can then use the eyes in the sky to see what the conditions are. For sharks or bait balls that are coming through, drones are absolutely fantastic.

“The drone goes over the top, it gives a little more confidence for people on the beach to know that there’s that extra set of eyes looking after them, and that’s been really successful.”

‘The sea is the boss’

Brian Barrow and Errol ‘Jay’ Corr have recently been recognised for rescuing a woman from rough conditions at a Port Macquarie beach.

Both men jumped in to help the woman with barely a second thought, but said their experience in the ocean had given them the confidence to do so.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the water before on a surf ski so I was reasonably confident, but I knew I had to not panic, that was the main thing,” Mr Barrow said.

Both men have been humbled by the Commendation for Brave Conduct they have been awarded.

They said they felt honoured but they were not heroes, but the woman they rescued, Joy Carter, feels differently.

“I was very fortunate they put their own lives at risk to save me, a stranger,” she said.

“Not everyone would do that and I probably owe my life to them … I was in serious trouble, I knew I was.”

Mr Corr hopes the story acts as a warning to others and encourages them to find out as much about beach conditions as possible.

“The whole thing is it’s education on the sea, the sea’s the boss, there’s nothing you can do about it, so that’s basically it,” he said.

Plenty of education available

Surf Life Saving NSW runs a range of education programs.

“For people coming to the coast on holidays we run our beach to bush program, which runs throughout rural NSW, and again it’s about educating those people that are going to the beach what to look out for,” Mr O’Mara said.

“There’s a plethora of material also now on the internet in relation to rips and that’s available on Surf Life Saving NSW and Surf Life Saving Australia websites.

“And get the kids learning to swim because that’s the thing you can do the most, not panicking, knowing how to swim, knowing how to float, that’s what it’s all about.”

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SPRING may be just around the corner but winter still has some life in it yet with record low temperatures this morning and a “substantial rain event” headed for large parts of eastern Australia.

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TROY Glover was cruising down a Northern Territory river, laughing with his family and friends about the seven crocodiles circling their two houseboats, when a freak storm hit.

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Anaphylaxis isn’t fussy eating, it’s life or death.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.

The red colour rolled across her face. The hives around her chin appeared gradually as her neck, her hands, her face swelled. She was talking, but slowly the flow of air to her lungs slowed.

Her clear, blue eyes were still with fear.

But somehow she remained calm. She told me to get the Epipen and then call an ambulance. She took care of the rest.

“Hi, my name’s Siobhan,” I said to the lady on the end of the line, “and my sister Erin is having an anaphylactic reaction.”

Soon we heard the sirens and saw the flashing lights. Thanks to the adrenaline Erin’s condition was improving but they took her to hospital anyway.

That was the most serious reaction I’ve seen Erin have and I’ll never forget it. The way her eyes looked. Terrified.  Masked only with her determination to survive.

Erin has no less than five anaphylactic allergies. She can’t eat nuts, seafood, legumes, kiwi fruit or be administered a non-steroidal agent. It’s because there are so many things that could kill her that makes the current Epipen shortage particularity worrying.

Recently Erin was told by a pharmacist that it’s unlikely she will be able to get her hands on a life-saving Epipen when her current batch expires, and instead she should use two children’s Epipens. This isn’t because a child’s Epipen has the same dose that an adult’s does, but simply because there is no other option should she have a reaction.

It’s for this reason that understanding the seriousness of anaphylaxis is so important. When Erin requests no chickpeas in her salad or no kiwi fruit in her smoothie when she eats out it’s not because she prefers not to eat them but because if she does she could lose her life.

I’ve often thought in a world where vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, all organic, sustainably farmed and diary free (sometimes all at once) are readily available for those who want it, there’d be scope to understand those who don’t have the luxury of choosing what they can and cannot eat.

It’s for this reason that I still carry guilt for what I did nearly two years ago. It was Christmas morning and Erin and I were with our parents in Germany visiting family for the festive season. It was my day for the morning bread run, so I shuffled myself down to the bakery at Cologne central station and got a wide assortment of fresh rolls.

At breakfast Erin chose one of the heavily seeded rolls and she looked at me and asked, “does this have nuts in it?”

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s a bread roll, they don’t put nuts in rolls here, just seeds.”

She trusted me, but she shouldn’t have.

The first sign for her was the itchy tongue and the tightening throat. For us it was the reddening face and the swelling hands like it always is. She stopped eating fast enough to halt the reaction’s progress but she was unwell for the rest of the day.

But she wasn’t the only one who was sick. My stomach churned until I felt nauseous. That reaction was entirely my fault.

And what’s worse — I constantly harp on about people not taking the issue of anaphylaxis seriously.

I’m always saying how people need to understand that anaphylaxis is not a lifestyle choice, but a serious life-threatening issue. I’m outspoken about the Epipen shortage and what that would mean for people like Erin whose lives literally depend on that medication.

If there’s a lesson to be learned, you can learn it from me and how I endangered my sister’s life with a frustrated eye roll and without a second thought that what she was asking wasn’t fussy, but legitimate.

I have witnessed the delicate balance Erin manages between allergies and food choices since we were kids, but even I need reminding sometimes about just how important understanding the gravity of the issue is.

Even I need reminding just how easily a life can be taken by the simple act of eating the wrong thing, or the correct medication being unavailable or people simply not understanding that the wrong food could kill.

Since the bread roll incident I’ve been more conscious to take her worries seriously and be mindful about the food products I buy.

We’re lucky because Erin’s friends and our wider family have always been on board and often prepare her allergy-free food when we attend events or parties, but what has stuck with me the most is how accidental a death by anaphylaxis could be.

It could be as simple as buying a bread roll for your sister, her eating it and that bread roll ending her life.

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Katie Keane is like any six year old, missing her two front teeth and with a great love of monkey bars. But she lives with the constant threat of anaphylaxis.

If it were not for extensive adaptations of Port Fairy’s kindergarten and Catholic school, mainstream education would be a deathtrap for her.

Dozens of seemingly innocuous items are poisonous to Katie, a list so long that when asked what her daughter is allergic to her mother’s response is to laugh and say “a lot” before beginning to reel off the shopping list of dangers.

“Dairy, eggs, banana, lamb, beef, chicken, pork, leather, nuts, gelatine, strawberries, peas, watermelon, pumpkin. Oh, and she’s very allergic to cows! There’s a whole heap of stuff,” her mother Johanna Keane said.

What Ms Keane leaves off that list, Katie’s St Patrick’s Parish Primary School teachers fill in later.

“Ants, bees, wool, rabbits, chooks, kiwi fruit. She’s heat sensitive too,” four of her teachers chime in together, reciting what they can remember from Katie’s personal anaphylactic management plan.

The plan is an essential document stationed at each of the school’s telephones and in Katie’s special corner in her classroom.

It is part of a comprehensive preventative system the school has invested in so that Katie can attend class.

“There was a bit of fear to start with, to be honest,” said Sue Paulka, the school principal in the south-west Victorian town.

Katie’s school aide, Tracey Dalton, quantified that fear.

“I know that everyone here, if they were put in the situation, they would give her that EpiPen. But the thought that you may have to do it, it’s frightening,” she said.

However, after a few months, the effectiveness of their safety plan has helped school staff relax and has revealed the strength of their school community.

“In our classroom we don’t just have two sets of eyes, we have 29 sets of eyes,” said Katie’s class teacher Antonia Balmer.

“The kids know what Katie is allergic to and they’re all on the look-out.

“If they see a bee or an ant crawling around, often they’re quicker to pick that up than we are.

“It’s a bit like that saying — ‘it takes a village to bring up a child’,” she said.

School’s containment plan keeps Katie safe

Katie has her own sensor soap and tap, and all of her things are kept in her special corner — a safety requirement this little girl explains with pragmatism.

“I’m allergic and if there was another Katie they wouldn’t know that it would be my stuff,” she said.

“If they touch my things and they didn’t wash their hands then I would get a reaction if I lick my fingers.”

The school has not banned any particular lunch foods, and they have kept their brood of schoolyard chickens.

The other students simply make sure the chooks are not running around when Katie is.

“Katie’s just blended into our school environment. We’re all aware of her needs, it’s just the logistical side of things and making sure someone is watching her at all times,” said its principal Ms Paulka.

The school adapted and implemented a plan already devised in 2017 by Katie’s kindergarten.

“Thanks to the kinder and all the work they put in to help her transition over to school she’s had a pretty good run,” said Ms Keane, who was so impressed that she nominated the kindergarten for an award.

Port Fairy Kindergarten was this year’s recipients of the ‘Be a MATE’ award from Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia — MATE being ‘Make Allergy Treatment Easier’.

School foots the bill

Tracey Dalton was Katie’s kindergarten aide and is now her school aide.

The position is funded by the school — an approximated $50,000 per annum commitment — since St Patrick’s application to the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria’s funding from the Students with Disabilities (SWD) program was rejected.

Ms Dalton is charged with being constantly aware of Katie’s whereabouts and what she is coming into contact with.

“We make sure she’s wearing a vest out in the playground so that if she has a reaction, you know exactly where she is at what time,” Ms Dalton said.

“We try to keep her out of the bushes and trees because of bees and ants, and in the hotter months we need to slow her down because she was breaking out in hives.”

She is imperative in keeping Katie safe, and because of that St Patrick’s has committed to funding the position throughout Katie’s primary education.

In an incredible display of her can-do attitude, Katie’s mother is always very quick to point out all the things her daughter can eat.

“She can eat hake, and tinned tuna. She loves green beans and potato chips, and she can have wheat and soy. So we’re a bit lucky there,” Ms Keane said, without irony.

Constant preparedness the key

Ms Keane’s willingness to laugh and emphasis on the positive is indicative of her character. She cares for her daughters with an admirable mixture of light-hearted warmth and meticulous organisation.

She said that Katie’s sister Izzi has also been great support.

“Izzi has been present for most of Katie’s reactions which is pretty stressful for a sibling,” she said.

“She goes out of her way to tell Katie that she’s jealous of what she ‘gets to eat’, just to make her feel special.

“I’m very lucky to have two fabulous kids.”

Ms Keane’s determination to maintain a balanced outlook is in many ways the key element that allows Katie to experience a happy childhood, unencumbered by fear.

But the fear is real, and Johanna Keane’s calm is astonishing.

She is a nurse by day, and in every other waking hour a mother who must remain in a constant state of preparedness.

In Katie’s short life she has been saved by EpiPen 12 times. On five of those occasions, it was Katie’s mum who administered the life-saving treatment.

Living 20 minutes from an ambulance services means that the emergency has to be dealt with by her.

“One of the things I had to overcome quickly is that if you don’t act the possibility is death,” Ms Keane said.

“You have to be brave, if anything, that’s what I’ve had to learn — that I can actually be very brave.”

Despite this, Ms Keane is seemingly buoyant with optimism.

“I don’t like her whole life to be about her allergies, we lead a really normal life,” she emphasised.

“There’s just a lot of planning involved if you do something out of the ordinary.”

Fastidious planning

Ms Keane tells of how some of the small things can be hard — like always needing to be aware of what you are wearing before you hug your daughter.

“Katie can spot wool from a mile off,” she said.

Katie’s dad, Glenn Keane, is a butcher, and working with meat every day meant he had to go home and shower before he could pick Katie up from school.

Otherwise he had to tell her “no hugs”.

“That’s really hard,” Ms Keane said.

“Not being able to hug your daughter, or having to brush your teeth and wash your face before you can give her a kiss.”

Her parents’ fastidious planning and her school’s multi-layered system of protection is keeping Katie happy, safe and included.

“I’m overwhelmed by Katie’s resilience,” Ms Keane said.

“Fortunately, I don’t think she feels that different because she is never excluded.

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Asthma is more prevalent and more serious in Shepparton compared with Melbourne according to a local respiratory specialist.

Dr Adrian Chazan, a respiratory and sleep specialist at Wyndham House Clinic in Shepparton, said he dealt with a variety of conditions but local patients often presented with more serious cases of asthma.

Having worked in both Shepparton and Melbourne for the past six years, Dr Chazan said there were a few reasons asthma was more prolific in the Goulburn Valley.

‘‘Shepparton is a hot spot for allergies due to a mix of grass and pollen,’’ he said.

‘‘It also tends to be a lot more of a drier and hotter climate here.’’

Dr Chazan said it was also due to the industry in the area where workers were often exposed to substances that worsened asthma.

‘‘For farmers there’s also a major risk for asthma due to animal products,’’ he said, and added being around animals could trigger asthma.

‘‘The asthma here is more common and more severe.’’

He, along with respiratory scientist Emily Francois, can now diagnose asthma and many other respiratory conditions in Shepparton, removing the need for patients to travel elsewhere.

‘‘We’ve just developed a lung function testing lab, which is a big deal,’’ Dr Chazan said.

‘‘It’s a big project we’ve been working on for a long time.’’

A variety of tests can reveal a patient’s respiratory function and consequently their condition can be managed accordingly.

The clinic also works with GPs to diagnose their patients and the service is bulk-billed.

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