sometimes I sits and thinks.....

Interesting experience last night.  I was joking with one of my med crew last night that I have to double check the schedule in order to decide how much to nap during the day.  When one of the nurses and I get on a night shift together, we seem to always spend all night flying.  Last night was no exception.

We responded to a call just before midnight to go to a rural area to pick up an elderly stroke victim.  When we got there, the doc apologized that we had to come.  The guy was probably not going to make it, but his family wanted him taken to the neuro center in the city, a 90 minute flight for us, after making the 45 minute flight to get him.  So away we went. We were a little irritated because we knew that we would not get back to base until the sun started coming up.  (I know not a good example of EMS service, but again, the guy had a less than 1% chance of ever waking up again, so the irritation was for the waste of resources)

We packaged the patient and noticed some severe scaring on his shoulder and back of his leg.  After we took off for the city, the med crew started going through his records.  Here was a guy who was almost 90 years old with some interesting trauma to his body.  As they reviewed his records, they discovered that the trauma were GSWs....gun shot wounds.  Now we were curious, how does a 90 year old man get gun shot wounds.  Then we discovered he was a WWII vet.  Then the clincher...he was a code talker.

Now we knew where the wounds came from.  We were a little humbled to realize that we were taking a real American hero on his last flight.  Several years ago I mentioned "Angle Flights" as one of the last rites given to a fallen service member leaving theater.  Tonight, as I "sits and thinks"  I will proclaim that I am glad that I got to participate in last nights flight.  His family will never know, he will never know, but to me it meant something to have him in my aircraft.  There are only about a dozen left.  This man was a member of a small group that indirectly saved thousands of lives.  That group that were saved includes my own grandfather.

Attention.
Present - Arms.


Bezaad ye at ah na ayee yik'eh deesdlu.