“I Have the best job in the World”

When I was in high school, a friend of my sister was a single-engine pilot. For my sixteenth birthday, her gift to me was a flight with her friend. I instantly fell in love with flying and knew I wanted to fly for a living. I took lessons, and when I turned eighteen I got my private pilot’s license. While I was taking lessons I did some research and found that the Air Force would provide me the best opportunities to fly and have a career in aviation. I also found that if I had the grades and got letters of recommendation from teachers and congressmen, I might have a chance at the Air Force Academy, and fulfill my dream to become a pilot. I was willing to fly anything, from cargo planes to fighter jets. Just get me up there in the wild blue. That was my goal and what I wanted to do as a career. Then life happened, things changed, and I never went to the Academy. Specifically, I ended up getting married, that marriage ended in divorce, and I never followed that dream. When I was twenty-eight years old I had open heart surgery. I had a congenital defect, which needed to be repaired or else I would have died of a heart attack by the time I was in my forties. I had the surgery, and it was then I decided I wanted to be a cardiac nurse. I went to nursing school at Auburn University in Alabama, and accomplished what I set out to do. I worked in a cardiac ICU and became a cardiac nurse.

After a few years working in the cardiac ICU, I moved and worked in the cath lab and became the senior electrophysiology nurse. This job was hard and we worked long hours, but I loved every minute of it. We had to cover emergency calls a few nights a week and on the weekends, and it was one night on call when I met the chief nurse at the 908th Aeromedical Staging Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base. My team got paged around one in the morning to come in to the cath lab for a gentleman who was having a heart attack.

We got there, did the procedure on him, and saved his life. After the procedure I went to speak to his wife to let her know her husband was doing well and she could see him soon. We then got to talking, and that is how my military career began.

My patient happened to be the chaplain at Maxwell AFB, and his wife was the chief nurse at the 908th. I sat and spoke with her for a while about her husband’s procedure and visited with her several times during his hospital stay. We got to talking about the military, and that is when I found out they were both in. She talked to me about critical care air transport teams (CCATT), and I immediately wanted to do it.

She described CCATT as a flying ICU. It is a three-person team composed of one critical care physician, one critical care nurse, and a critical care respiratory therapist. They are equipped with 750 pounds of equipment and can transport up to six critically wounded warriors, with three being on ventilators, on any mode of transport the Air Force had (aircraft, Humvees, ambulances, etc.). CCATT had been established in the Air Force since 1996 and the 908th had one CCAT team on their manning document but did not have the personnel to fill the slots.

After 9/11 my desire to join the military had increased again, and this seemed like the perfect time to finally pursue that dream. I told her I was interested, but I thought I was too old to join the military. It turned out I was not, and I immediately contacted a recruiter. I told him I had already spoken to the chief nurse at the 908th about how she wanted me as her CCATT nurse, and that I wanted to sign on the dotted line. This was in 2002.

When I learned I needed open heart surgery, I realized life was too short, that people were precious and time was not guaranteed. I needed to do something important and becoming a nurse and saving lives, like someone did for me, seemed like the right thing to do. As stated earlier, my initial goal in life was to become a pilot, but I now believe things happen for a reason. Becoming a cardiac nurse and saving the chaplain’s life that night put me on the path to my military career. Not only could I be a nurse, but I could be a nurse for the best country in the world and take care of true heroes.

Training is vital for the doctors and nurses of CCATT to maintain a high level of proficiency as they care for critically wounded servicemen and women. AIR FORCE PHOTO

Because of my open heart surgery, it took almost a year for the surgeon general to approve me to join the military. They required several pieces of documentation from my cardiologist saying that I was fit for duty. Finally, on March 31, 2003, I raised my right hand and joined the US Air Force Reserves.

I started drilling at the unit. I went to Reserve Commissioned Officer Training School for four weeks at Maxwell in 2003 and started my CCATT training in 2004, and I have been with them ever since. If it wasn’t for being on call that night for the Cath lab, and saving the chaplain’s life, I would not be in the military doing the job I love so much. They say people meet for a reason and there was definitely a reason for me being on call that night and meeting them.

Over the past ten years I have flown over a hundred CCATT missions and have transported more than a hundred wounded warriors. In Iraq, the base was constantly getting bombed, but we never thought about it. We were there to do a mission, and it was our job to get the wounded troops home to their loved ones.

Some missions were harder than others, each one had a different story, but all tugged at our heart strings. Every single time I walked into the ICU to package our patients for the flight, my breath was immediately taken away and I got teary-eyed. Seeing the young men and women, lying in their beds with blast injuries that can only happen in a war zone, definitely makes you have a new perspective on life. What these boys and girls were willing to do to protect our freedom is beyond remarkable.

I will never forget one mission we did. We had to fly further down-range, to Tallil, Iraq, to pick up a nineteen-year-old boy who had lost both of his legs in an IED blast. When we walked into the ICU, I immediately had a connection with him. To this day I still can’t figure out what it was, but I never left his side for twenty-four hours. We picked him up, brought him to Balad for more definitive care, and my team volunteered to take him to Germany (where Landstuhl Military Hospital is) because he requested that I remain his nurse.

When we got on the back of the aircraft in Tallil, and it was time to take off, I was unable to leave his side. Every time I tried to walk away to get to my seat for takeoff he would raise his head and grab my hands. The pilots of the aircraft were getting impatient because we needed to take off, but I refused to leave my patient’s side. So the aeromedical evacuation crew strapped me to the side of his litter so I would not be tossed around during the combat takeoff we had to perform.

As the transport plane ascended above the clouds, it came under attack from surface-to-air missiles, and had to dispatch counter-measures to keep from getting hit. AIR FORCE PHOTO

During takeoff the aircraft started to get shot at by surface-to-air missiles. Needless to say it was a rough ride out of the airport, but no matter what, no matter how scared we all felt, I continued to hold my patient’s hand. Once at altitude I was able to free myself from the litter, but I continued to stand by his side, hold his hand, and talk to him. I assumed he knew he lost his legs, but I soon found out he didn’t know.

At some point during the flight back to Balad, he looked up at me and asked me if he had in fact lost both of his legs. I immediately started to tear up knowing that I had to be the one to tell this nineteen-year-old that yes, he did lose both of his legs. He acknowledged what I told him and reached out his arms, put them around me, hugged me, patted me on the back and told me not to worry, that he was going to be okay! I will never forget that young man and that mission as long as I live.

He was just one of the stories I have tucked away in my memory. Each mission and each patient had a story, whether it was a personal story, a devastating injury, a family member waiting to greet them when we brought them home, or the camaraderie and teamwork displayed by the medical evacuation crews and aircraft crews on the back of the plane. Being CCATT and transporting our wounded warriors home is definitely the best job in the world. I also believe it is a selfish job for me. I get to wear the uniform of a country I love, and get true heroes home to receive more definitive care and treatment or keep them alive long enough for their family and loved ones to be able to say their final goodbyes.

And every day, I always think if it wasn’t for being a part of the team that saved the life of the chaplain for Maxwell AFB, I would not be doing the best job in the world, which is caring for America’s heroes!!

—Trish Hayden, Air Force Critical Care Air Transport (CCATT) Nurse