Behind the Scenes, Pt. 2

This past week was the first week of air ambulance flights for me, and it was a relatively busy one. In all, I flew a little over 20 hours in 7 days on 5 different flights. It’s great to be flying again, and I really enjoy the medical aspect of it. I’m sure you’re dying to know what all goes into an air ambulance flight, so I’ll tell you. It all starts with the call from the hospital telling us they have a patient to be transferred. The pilots then hustle to the airport if they’re not there already, preflight the airplane, file the flight plan, and make sure everything is ready to go and then wait for the paramedics to arrive (our goal is to be taking off within 45 minutes after we first get the call). Then we bust out of Gabs as quickly as circumstances allow and head to the referring hospital (our most common flight is to Maun), where we meet the ambulance, help the paramedics load the patient(s) if needed, and make sure to collect the needed paperwork (often the hospital will send a less serious patient along with the more urgent one just because there’s room in the plane). Then we scoot ASAP and fly to the airport nearest the receiving hospital, where an ambulance comes to unload the patients and whisk them to the hospital. The patients coming from hospitals and clinics in the southern part of the country come back to Gaborone and those from the northern part of the country go to Francistown in the northeast. So if the patient went to Francistown, we then can relax and fly a leisurely leg back to Gaborone. When we get back home, we finish all the paperwork, get the airplane ready for the night, and wait for Air BP to finish refueling the aircraft (which can take quite a while depending on their workload). The medical conditions of the patients are quite varied (many are the result of road accidents), and this week’s patients included a one year-old with a wire embedded in its eye, a fellow with a spinal injury from wrestling while intoxicated, and a car accident victim, among others. All of the patients have received health care at the hospitals or clinics that they came from and are usually quite stable but unable to be transported by road for various reasons. So that’s a day in the life. The flights will continue on Saturday when I go on call again. In the meantime, I’ve been doing orientation activities with Tina Kort and the short-termers that have recently arrived from Germany and Switzerland. The two fellows from Germany, Christian and Stefan, are going to be living with me in Flying Mission’s short-termer house, and I’m excited to finally have some housemates. They’re fun guys to be around and we really get along quite well. And that's the news from Botswana.