HARD DECISIONS AND MEMORIES OF ANOTHER MERCY FLIGHT - ROGER

Since I got my paperwork sorted out I have been very busy flying, one flight even called out at night to one of the few places we can fly into at night – arriving back at 3:00AM. The mercy flights seem to come in waves, and right now we are riding a high one. I have had numerous car accident victims, a few maternity cases, at least one assault victim, a donkey cart accident, and a few newborn babies as patients. This is all in the last two weeks. Three of the patients have been completely paralyzed from the neck down, with little hope for a recovery. Two of those patients were transported to South Africa, but the rest of the flights have all been from a smaller referral hospital to one of the two better equipped hospitals in the country. When we lived here in the 80’s and 90’s many of our mercy flights went to South Africa, but today almost all of the patients can be treated in Botswana. The health care in the country is vastly improved and doctors are stationed throughout the country and can treat many patients in the new hospitals. It is great to see the improvement. The last time I was here the most frequent mercy flight was for maternity cases. Today vehicle accidents seem to be the major cause.

The last three days some difficult decisions had to be made by the paramedics onboard. Last night we got a call late for a mercy flight from the hospital a little over an hour’s flight away to go to South Africa. They decided it could wait until morning, so we left early today for the flight. While the paramedics were at the hospital preparing the patient for transport we got a call of a very critical patient in Maun, and it was decided since the patient for South Africa was fairly stable we should go for the other patient at Maun. That is over an hour away as well, and while loading the patient we got another call for a pre-mature baby at Hukuntsi. Since we did not have enough duty time to do both remaining flights the doctors and the paramedics had to discuss which one we should do. It was decided we would go to South Africa and the baby would have to be transported by road, but it was very likely the baby would not survive.

Two days ago we also had a situation where a decision had to be made quickly. We had to go to Ghanzi to pick up a three day old baby in critical condition – a 1.5 hour flight. When we arrived they decided to send another cancer patient along. About 30 minutes after takeoff the cancer patient stopped breathing and the paramedics were frantically trying to resuscitate him. While they were trying to revive him the baby’s mother told them her baby was blue and was not breathing. Decisions, decisions! Which one do they try to revive with their limited equipment? Which one was more likely to survive? They decided on the baby, and did get her revived, but the other patient did not make it. It was a stressful day for the paramedics, and made me appreciate some of the life and death decisions medical personnel are called to make at times.

We had to dodge thunderstorms the last part of the trip, and I couldn’t help but think of the last time I had a 3 day old baby on board dodging thunderstorms across the Central Kalahari Desert, with a doctor frantically trying to keep her breathing. The mother that night handed her baby over to the doctor, not wanting to have her baby die in her arms. At least this time I had weather detection equipment, and I had not lost my alternator as well as communications and all electrics. That long 2 ½ flight, over 19 years ago, was the most stressful flight of my career. I prayed that the child in the back struggling to breathe would also grow up to be a beautiful healthy young woman, just like the other baby I flew 19 years ago – our daughter Lisa.