FlightEMS.com

Yesterday while at Sharks’ Cove, I wandered up to the car to get my towel and rinse off by myself. Three girls hobbled by, two helping the third who was limping in the middle. They were all islanders, 13 and 14 years old. A second girl had blood all over her thigh. I dug the first aid kit out of the dive bag. I was lucky that Patrick had mentioned it’s existence earlier. I bought it for him as a Christmas gift a few years ago.

After pulling it out, I threw my cover-up on, grabbed a towel and walked over to where they were rinsing off in fresh water. I introduced myself, told them who I was and offered to help. They were actually being fairly calm and supporting each other in ways only teenage girls can. I looked at their wounds and offered to patch them up.

It is amazing, but not surprising what ocean waves and volcanic rock can do.

The one girl had a gash about 5 cm long down her thigh, the other, a deep gash in the callous of her heel. Butterfly Band-Aids to the thigh, regular ones to the heel after washing them both out with the bottled water I had. Abby, Gabby, and Molly were their names. They all swore they thought I was only 21 years old. They were astonished when I told them I was 31. It made me smile, but be glad I was no longer that age. The other interesting thing was that I introduced myself as a Nurse, not as a Nurse Practitioner. It just seemed to require less explanation.

The girl with the thigh wound really needed some stitches. She had so little body fat that it went deep enough to hit fascia but was deceiving because of the lack of obvious subcutaneous layer. It was gaped open about a centimeter and will leave a bad scar if her father, who showed up a few minutes later, decided not to take her in because of lack of insurance.

When finished explaining to the dad what I thought, and giving my infection teaching in a subtle way, they thanked me and hobbled off. While throwing out the bandage wrappers and folding up the towel, an older islander woman, who would be called abuelita in Mexico, wandered over in her very large floral print dress and said, “That was very nice of you to do.”

Apparently she had been watching me. It is funny how much helping like that just becomes an extension of who I am, even when I least expect it.

As of 6 Aug 06 I am Flight Nurse Emily. *the crowd goes wild*

Actually, I am feeling quite reserved about the entire thing for some strange reason. Everything I have done since 1997 has been preparing me to get to this point. My last flight as an Army Medic was the summer of 1999. Can that really be 7 years ago? Damn…

I have blown the dust off of my old paramedic books and my acute care cheat cards. I haven’t had the heart to pull out my mini-flashlight and other gadgets. I am to afraid of getting so excited I will just begin twitching uncontrollably.

So, before I leave my current role as an Ortho-Trauma NP, I want to finish a few miscellaneous projects and I need to clean out my desk.

The most interesting thing about leaving, however, has been the reaction people give me when I tell them.

“I am leaving on August 6th.”

A look of confusion, “What do you mean leaving?”

My shoulders shrug. “Well, I took a position at AeroMed as a Flight Nurse.”

“OH MY GOD! That is great!”

Hmmmmm. Not quite the reaction I expected. I thought I would get a bit a disappointment and maybe some, “oh what will we do without you?” Definitely not the case. I finally realized it is because of two things:

1) Being a flight nurse is just short of being a Blue Angels pilot in the coolness factor

2) It fits me so much that it just makes sense to people

An eerie sense of relief and calmness has settled over me. I just didn’t realize how much stress being in this position, because I knew it wasn’t me, had accumulated.

So, although I will be giving up my prescriptive authority and NP pay (about 13K and 4 weeks of annual vacation), I will be given a much more broad scope of practice.

Back to Mach 2 with my hair on fire….

It is about time.