Transporting a Child

By now, my regular readers know I have a special place in my heart for combat medics. You also know well that my heart always goes out to the children that our troops care for - and nurture - every day they are "over there."

This story encompasses both elements and is from a site that I found a while back, and have been meaning to share with you all:

03:54 Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Transporting a child

I have been in emergency medicine a long time. I have seen a lot of things that would give most second thoughts about humanity as a whole. However, the patients that have bothered me most over they years have always been the children. I have witnessed some horrible things done to children in my tenure, including using them as shields.

We received a medevac for a child with burns. The first thing asked following the basic report was not whether or not the child was ready for transport, but whether this was another burn to the groin and abdomen. It was not the first, nor would it be that last of this particular injury we have seen. The child, about 7, had been burned upon her abdomen, groin, and thighs by hot water from a stove. She had dressings covering all the areas burned and had been given medicine to help with the terrible pain. She was wrapped in a blanket, had an IV, and a multitude of wires for the monitor coming from her body. She was stable, scared, and worried about flying so far away from her family. She didn’t speak English, of course, but was quite aware that people were talking about her. She had never been in a helicopter, and I am sure the only ones she had seen were assault aircraft with troops on board. She had an “uncle” to go with her to the hospital.

The back story that was quickly related was that one of her parents had become angry at the other and thrown the boiling water on the child in retribution. This was to keep the child from reproducing children to carry on the family line. I don’t know exactly how accurate that was as it was relayed through family and interpreters, but the location of the injury led credence to the story. That, and this was not the first case we had seen....

Of course, you will not find this story, or the background issues which led to it, in the msm. BUT we know that every single day our troops - including our medics - serve in ways that never make front page news.

This specific story is from Far from Perfect: The Journal of a Combat Medic.. Read the rest of this entry here, and then bookmark the site.

H/T The Thunder Run