Never forget the first...

Eventhough my first experience with death was of a local national Afghani it still hit me harder than I expected but it wasn't until afterwards when I felt it. We got the call that a bird was coming in with casualties and I jumped on the opportunity first chance I got. I assembled my team, hopped into the back of the ambulance and drove out to the flight line, at this moment the bird flew in and quickly came down to a landing, the force wind from the rotor blades and all. We then ran out, ducking, thinking we are dodging the spinning blades, and I notice our helocopter crew hopping out and sliding the side door open. The flight medic had our guy on a stretcher performing CPR chest compressions. We quickly ran up, grabbed a handle and got him over to the ambulance, continued CPR compressions, got to the hospital and followed him inside. After brief observation of the patient the nurses quickly scrambled around while others performed chest compressions. There was no pulse left and after and ultrasonic scan of his chest the local national was pronounced dead. At this moment I felt a little weak, to my surprise actually.

On my way back to the clinic I couldn't find a single body, turns out there was a secondary patient in the helo that needed to be transported to a different hospital so I geared up and hopped in the second ambulance with a nurse. The second local national was dead but the nurse and I started chest compressions and breathes. There was no pulse. Great, two in one night. That's what I was thinking until we got a small pulse, irregular but, there, none-the-less. We ended up saving this guys life. Eventually we were able to remove the oxygen and he began breathing on his own so to balance moods out -- lose a life, save a life.

I am still a little shooken up but need to get back to work.