It’s been sometime since I have posted anything. The pandemic is sort of over. We’ve moved from the suburbs of Charleston SC to a little place in the woods between Elko SC and Williston SC. Started a new job in building and running a brand new EP lab in Aiken SC. Moved my mom here with us, and built (well still building) her a tiny house on our land. Oh, our land? Nothing huge. A hair over an acre of grass and trees. A fantastic well. Eight homes are on our dirt road. Our closest neighbor is about 115 yards away to our south. The next nearest is about 200 yards to our north. Surrounded by pines, oaks, gum trees holly trees, wild plums, and persimmons.
The journey starts. Again.
My partner in life, my beautiful wife of 31 years, Christine, and my partner in medical shenanigans, Freya Swan, best herbalist you’ve never heard of! And someone new, well not new to anyone who has done ANY sort of prepping, Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper. She is on board as an advisor, editor, contributor and as an administrator. And to keep me in line! Well we have been talking and we decided we need to bring back The Shack. To pull some irons out of the fire and focus…..
Um, irons in the fire? For the 15 past 2 years I was trying my hand at blacksmithing. I did it when I was younger and got pretty dang good. Still do it as a hobby, but health issues (my body) have said it’s not a full-time job for me.
The why.
Back to The Shack. I decided, along with the two special people in my life, that we need to get back to what we know. And that’s helping people. By teaching how to prepare folks for whatever may happen. Blending modern medicine with the skills of the past. When you NEED to use the modern tools, and using the old tools to not so much replace. But to augment the modern.
There are a lot of things, good things that our modern medicines and tools can do. But they cannot do everything. And sometimes, either the side effects are not desirable, or the risk vs benefit does not balance. Or it’s just plain unavailable. Herbal medicine. It’s been with us since the time mankind figured out how to walk upright. But like its modern counterparts, side effects, availability, risk vs benefits and education are not what we need or aren’t there.
Modern medicines can do things that herbs can’t do and vice versa. Antibiotics, for example. We have some fantastic herbs, but for the most part, they can not cope with a serious internal infection. Cat, Christine, and I have done some amazing things with infections. One that comes to mind was treating a lady at a class I was teaching at Shots Ranch in Kingman, Arizona, almost ten years ago.
An Example
Short story we saw this lady limping around the facility, with her left foot wrapped. I asked to see her wound, and she unwrapped it, and we found she had a wet gangrene infection on her ankle. She was (is)diabetic. I suggested she go immediately to the nearest ER and get it treated. She refused to and well you know you can not make anyone do anything they do not wish.
And she already said she had been to her doctor, and they wanted to amputate her foot. Chris and I moved her into the lodge from her tent and treated her wound with a herbal wound wash, poultices, and debridement of the dead tissue. This was the first day, and by day 4, the last day of the class, tissue granulation had started, and pink healthy tissue was closing the wound.
We got LUCKY. I’ll be the first to admit it. But I had a few things going for me. First, my wife, who used to do wound care, knew how to debride the wound and dress it correctly. I had the correct herbs on hand. And the patient was willing to be treated and follow instructions to the letter. I’ll dig up the video of her and post it.
Edited to had this link of the exit interview my friend Jeff made of lady who Christine and I treated. Maggie’s video from the Shots Ranch FB Page
And the how.
This and a lot of other personal and, yes professional reasons are why I decided to pull irons out of the fire and focus on fewer things. Namely, my family, my faith, and teaching from The Medic Shack.
It’s going to be a slower start. We need to build content. See what is needed and wanted. (Two very different things, as you all will come to see.) Make the time to do it. But we’ll get er done!
Some of the plans are new blog posts, and new classes both in person and online. And a new podcast is in the works. As the coming weeks go by, we’ll outline our plans and get new content up.
Thank you all for being patient and hopefully getting some useful information from us, We’re happy as hell to be back!
One thing y’all may have noticed is the page is brand new and basically a clean slate. But don’t worry. Every post going back to our beginning on June 15, 2014 is still here. Just use the search bar on the right side of the page.
Welcome back to the Medic Shack!
I’ll leave y’all with a picture of my new office here in the woods of South Carolina.
