Part One: Being on fire
Yah, “global warming”, bring it on! If you live in Canada, this may have once been your attitude, but if recently, you’ve started to experience the discomfort of sloughing off your outer dermal layer, perhaps it seems less desirable. In this brief series, I will pass along a few tips for dealing with the sticky subject of hyperthermia.
Telling if it’s too hot
You are walking your dog, which has white fur. It may be too hot if:
a) the glare from its fur blinds you
b) the dog can only keep two paws on the pavement at one time
c) the dog bursts into flames after five minutes of walking.
You are walking your dog, which has black fur. No, that’s not a dog, that’s a chunk of carbon.
Are you getting heat stroke?
Are you getting heat stroke? Are you wearing a tutu and shaving your back hair with a cheese grater? If you are hearing things (are you getting heat stroke . . . stroke . . . stroke) confused, or acting oddly, you may be getting suffering from heat stroke, or thermic fever as they called it in the old days. You may just be a strange person. You may have forgotten to take your medication. However, if you suffer from some of these other symptoms …
- headache
- high fever
- hot, red, dry skin
- loss of consciousness
…then it’s probably heat stroke, or siriasis, as they used to call it in the pretentious days.
We hope (and assume) you haven’t passed out. That will make it difficult to find a cooler place to be (and even harder to read this).
What happens next?
With any luck, the earth will move away from the sun, and we won’t all be consumed in a fiery ball of agony. With any luck.
I’m not that optimistic.
Seriously, heat exhaustion & heat stroke are pretty serious. (Are you hearing things? No, I’m just being redundant.) You can get real information about it at this site from some Ontario government ministry. Despite that, I’d trust them more than me.
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