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Gatorade's Combat Uses

by on July 28, 2007 in Tech

W.Thomas Smith’s latest dispatch from Iraq:

It’s so easy to become dehydrated out here.

An Army captain back in Kuwait described how soldiers and Marines in combat sometimes cut open the top of an IV fluid bag, mix-in some Kool-Aid powder from an MRE, and drink it. “It tastes pretty bad, he said. “But it’s almost instant rehydration, and soldiers keep fighting.”

….reminded me of this bit from Robert Kaplan’s superb Imperial Grunts:

….Sgt. Keith Pace of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had, among other exploits, saved a seven-year-old girl’s life with a Gatorade enema. “She had spinal meningitis,” Pace explained to me. “She was dehydrating fast. I couldn’t find a vein for an intravenous solution. I filled an enema with a bottle of Gatorade, lifted her butt, rammed the Gatorade up her anus. It got into her bloodstream and rehydrated her.”

Probably the Navy’s favorite way to hydrate.

Comments (0)

Comments

  1. LtCol P says:
    July 28, 2007 at 8:59 am

    D’OH!!!

    Brother Rat BullNav will NOT be pleased…

    :-)

  2. DaveO says:
    July 28, 2007 at 10:22 am

    …no wonder sailors always smile… imagine that…

  3. John says:
    July 28, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    heh, this is gonna be a great thread

  4. Deborah Aylward says:
    July 28, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    I always thought that’s why BRITISH sailors smile.

    Just for the record, that really is standard medical practice for when a vein can’t be found…adult or child.

    Veritas et Fidelis Semper

  5. John says:
    July 28, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    what…with gatorade?

  6. R says:
    July 28, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    I cant wait to see the tv commercial that Gatorade makes out of that.

  7. andrewdb says:
    July 28, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    My Navy corpsmen buddies tell me that saline IV drips (without the gatorade) work GREAT to rehydrate after a hard night drinking.

  8. mustang says:
    July 28, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    After a hard nite drinking we would just climb into the cockpit and turn on the LOX and breath 100% oxygen.

    Course the pilots would do their preflight and make us top off the LOX!

  9. Joel says:
    July 29, 2007 at 4:50 am

    Have never heard of drinking the IV bag, though I’ve seen it administered with pretty large guage needles for a faster flow.

    Have heard of administering IV via rectum, but only for extreme cases.

    Fortunately, I’ve never been a recipient of one of those.

    When the sergeant says, “drink water”, dammit, he means it.

  10. referman says:
    July 29, 2007 at 6:46 am

    Be carefull of drinking the gatorade.I found out the hard way,I was drinking gallons of the stuff during the summer and when I went to the VA regular visit my sugar was way out of wack!So I told the doc and we did a three week-no gatorade and sugars came back down.Great job Sgt Pace saving the girls life!!(referman)thats refrigeration and A/C just to set things straight. Semper Fi

  11. Jetman says:
    July 29, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    Rectum?!?

    It nearly killed ‘em!!!