Action. You're in the helicopter it's loud you got your fins on your wetsuit
mask snorkel ready to go and then you jump. Danger. You can hear the ice hissing
and cracking all around you. Adventure. When you cross the equator you have to ask King
Neptune's permission to become a shellback. You're listening to Sea Story. Episode 55 "Doc." Part One:
My name is HM1 Mick Miller when I say HM1 that means hospital corpsman first class.
Being hospital corpsman you're essentially responsible for
all elements of the health and welfare of the marine brethren that you're stationed with so
you can do anything from routine immunizations doing sick call maintaining team health and then
obviously on the battlefield running trauma for your teammates and wounded partner forces.
Out in the field that's where the adrenaline kicks in dirty hands and knees in the mud
medicine that's what we live for! I joined in 2007 and that was right after watching Fallujah
on the news. Every night there's more names on the tv for you guys that had passed away
just felt like if I could do something to make there be less names then I should do that.
For our training that we go through, we have a 12-month medical course it's out in Fort Bragg
where we go through with members of the army special forces, some navy seals, army rangers as
well and that's where we get our a lot of hands-on medical training we do quite a bit of clinical
rotations and we also do a lot of hands and knees on the dirt running trauma drills. The teams are
small so there's a lot to do so everyone falls in on everyone else's job, I can't do my job alone.
In Afghanistan, it was 2012 we took a casualty it was a local who triggered an IED
about 40 years old his 12-year-old son and his brother. The brother was in good shape
but his son had some scratches and the man who actually triggered the IED had lost both
legs, one above the knee one below the knee and he'd been peppered pretty good with shrapnel.
So, I was busy with that and also managing his son scared out of his mind yelling and screaming one
of the guys on the team he was actually our EOD Tech stepped in and just started going to town.
So, I was able to take a step off my patient and tell him what to do, he was
applying tourniquets, doing full blood sweeps on his own, and he did everything up until he
tried to initiate intravenous fluids. He patched up all the wounds he addressed breathing and he did
everything that allowed me to take a step back and call it out on the radio to get a helicopter in and if
I hadn't had him there to just step in and help out it would have been quickly overwhelming.
He's probably alive because I took the time to train him and he took the time to learn it and enact it.
The rubber meets the road when all the things you learn in the schoolhouse and all the things
that you do and all the hands-on drills and the late-night studying comes into play when you do
it for real. When you're on your knees working on a casualty who's actually injured as opposed
to a training mannequin and you realize you had all these answers that you didn't necessarily
know that you knew and then it becomes very tangible when you save someone's life with it.
The best trait that a corpsman can have I would say is humility, to have an open mind to be
able to learn from people to be able to learn from people that are junior to you in rank,
junior to you in service and to be able to learn from your own mistakes. No one can do everything
by themselves, everyone needs everyone else all the time and so it makes you give as much as you have.
Part Two: My name is Mike Diaz, I'm a hospital corpsman third class in the United States Navy,
I'm from Palm Bay, Florida and this is my Sea Story.
I was going for my EMT and a couple of the EMT guys that I've talked to were retired corpsmen.
They told me some of their stories and the history behind being a corpsman, I thought it
was the coolest thing ever. Everybody had such a high respect for Doc, you know Doc was the guy to
go-to for anything. I talked to a navy recruiter and at first the rate was kind of
locked out so let's hope you get it and I was so set on being a corpsman so it was either
navy corpsman or you don't get me. I waited a couple of months and off the boot camp I went.
It was a different breed of corpsman back then. PT almost every day we ran to the beach, we got sandy
the blizzards happened we donned our ski mask we put our sweatpants and everything else on it we
just went for runs for miles singing cadences the whole pain is weakness leaving the body kind of a
thing it was great. We went from doing everything that we were supposed to know in the hospital
to how we would react in a combative environment. Providing aid under fire maneuver to your very
basic how to sterilize water building latrines for guys. Everything that the Marines had to go
through the rifle ranges, hikes, everything that they had here in Europe we pretty much we
went through a washdown version of that. We are a the well-rounded community we don't just focus on one
aspect of the medical field we focus on everything pretty much anything you can think of we can do.
I left to go to Helmand Province Afghanistan as a medical advisor to the Afghan army. It was dusty
hot some days it would be 120, 130 on the cold day depending on what time of the year it was
it would get into the negatives in the certain areas that we would be in. I moved around Helmand
Province a lot. The A&A they were great patriots to their country, a lot of them are eager to learn
some of them are really smart. One of them he really impressed me when he knew how
to provide a needle thoracocentesis to one of the patients that we've had, that's how you relieve
some of the pressure within the chest area to help the lung expand. We taught them emergency medicine
to basic hygiene, brushing your teeth, changing your socks, staying hydrated, making sure your
guys are staying hydrated, making sure that they're actually practicing good hygiene themselves.
All the time we're being a lot like macgyver in the medical field we have to make do with what we have,
you don't have a tourniquet you make something. The biggest challenge for us while we were there was
trying to come up with an evacuation plan or a casualty evacuation plan for the Afghan Army
and doing that we uh save well over ten thousand Afghan soldiers lives.
Doc doesn't seem like he does a lot but he sees a lot what we do as corpsman now it's like being a
part of a family there's always something bad there's always something good you fight over
the dumbest things but at the end of the day you got a brother, to my boys yeah I love them.
Part Three: My name is Lawrence Lopez I'm from Phoenix, Arizona and this is my Sea Story.
I worked on the outside for 10 years as a physician assistant and then I came back in 2008.
The reason why I came back in wasn't for the money, I was making really good
money on the outside the reason why I came back again was to deploy I wanted to help.
I was healthy enough, I was fit enough, I felt confident enough,
I felt like I could help somebody so i came in I deployed to Afghanistan.
2010, that was one of the most hostile years of the Afghan war.
When you're deployed in a four-deployed environment you're out there and you're
serving side by side basically you know regardless of what's going on in politics you're there with
the guy you're left to your right. That is the most memorable time you're going to have I was 35 so i
was a little bit older than some of the other guys, I ran 60 plus missions outside the wire.
When you leave the wire and you're out there you just don't know it can be scary
but that's when you find out what you're going to do because until that time you don't know.
Twenty feet in front of us MRAP blew up two guys had a concussion we had a medevac one other
one everything just kind of goes quiet as that's happening i'm just listening. First and foremost is
making sure that we're not getting fired at, we're not getting shot at once that happened
I'm the first one out to take care of those that are hurt that's the job of the corpsman get there
to where they're hurt take care of them find out what's going on and then just proceed from there.
You have your med bag every person has their eye fac on them, that individual first aid kit.
In this particular situation, there was no need for that, we just needed a couple stretchers.
If you have a talent or a skill that you can offer that can help the guy or woman to your left
and your right then you need to. I mean we're all afraid it's normal to be afraid but being afraid
doesn't mean you're not brave. After you admit that and you're honest about that then what comes after
that I think is bravery. Coming next, the first time you don't even fly you just learn how to drive
to get to the runway and i could see all my friends trying to drive also and it looked
like a bunch of chickens. Sea Story brought to you by America's Navy. Learn more at Navy.com.