Patients follow us where ever we go...

Today was a very interesting day as I got to see first hand how great our EMTs are. Our chief nurse/deputy commander started out the day by ruining our diets with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts for the nurses. They were wonderful and tasted just like they do back home.

I convinced one of the other nurses to go out to the flight line festival that they were holding on the flight line. They had all of the aircraft out on display and were letting us go up inside them. In addition to that, the Army's Air Defense Artillary was out there as well. They are the ones that are going to protect us if any missiles are lobbed our way.

We had gotten a chance to see almost all of the aircraft and were on the last one. A C-17. This is the
medium sized cargo plane- considered the cadillac of A/E

missions but most of the time our

patients go out on the plane to the

right----> The C-17 is the first picture with me hanging out of the cockpit window. Capt Riggs and I were inside facing the back of the aircraft when we heard a shout and a bunch of curse words behind us.

We turned around just in time to see a man falling like a limp rag down 5 steep stairs from the cockpit. Picture to the left shows the stairs <-- When he didn't get up I heard Capt Riggs say "Oh S***" and we ran over to him. His knee was facing one direction and his right foot was facing another. You could just see how much pain he was in- if he could have seen what his leg looked like he would have probably passed out. Riggs shouted out the door of the plane for EMS- which was on the flight line. I tried to keep him calm until the EMTs showed up. They couldn't splint his leg because of the position his foot was in. They took him back to the hospital and we followed behind a few minutes later. Too much excitement. Turned out he tore both ligaments on both thighs holding his knee caps in place and tore some tendons holding his right ankle in place, and somewhere in his ankle was a broken bone..

The base Public Affairs people were on the plane taking pictures while we were getting him stabilized and they interviewed me afterwards. Maybe I will be in the public affairs e-mail that gets sent out every day.

The last picture shows a B-1 Lancer. This is a really cool bomber that I got to sign a bomb on last month and go up into the cockpit. The picture of me in front of wheels up above is in front of the B-1 just showing how enormous this plane is.