Every patient an important story to CASF staff

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Alexandria Mosness
  • U.S. Air Forces Central Public Affairs
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFNS) --  As she sifted through the captain's baggage to make sure he didn't have anything he wasn't supposed to, the young medic came across his watch.

The captain had been injured by an improvised explosive device where he lost three of his limbs. He had been unconscious the whole time he was at the Role 3 Hospital here. Knowing he would never be able to wear the watch again touched Staff Sgt. Carleen Wallace to the core, she said.

Wallace, a 651st Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility medical technician, said she sees patients like that of the young captain all the time.

"Knowing their life is going to be changed forever is hard," she said. "The patients that come in, no one will ever know their stories, so it is important that I remember each one."

Wallace is one of the approximately 28-member CASF team at KAF.

"Our role is to get them out of here," said Maj. David Thompson, 651st EAES CASF flight commander. "We are not a hospital or a clinic. Our role is medevac. When patients come in they go right to the Role 3 hospital and have surgery to get stable. The hospital has a 98 percent survivability rate. If you get them here alive, the Role will save you. Patients can be on the brink of death, and the doctors will perform miracle surgery. When the patients are stable, we need to get them out of here."

From Kandahar, the patients will generally go to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, and from there either to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, or to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington D.C.

If a patient's status is urgent, the CASF has 24 hours to get him or her out of Afghanistan, but generally it is faster than that. Thompson saw one patient get out in six hours. The main thing is to get them stable so they can travel.

The CASF loads and unloads patients to and from the Role 3 hospital. If the patient does not have a severe injury, they will wait for a flight in the CASF waiting area which is designed with patient comfort in mind. The waiting area has beds for the patients to rest, television, Wi-Fi, and constant care from the CASF staff.

Though there are many parts to the CASF, the medics are the ones leading the mission.

"We are the liaison between the flights coming in and the hospital," Wallace added. "Medics lead the missions. We do everything for the patient. From checking baggage to taking vitals on patients and taking them to the flightline to get on the plane that takes them out of Afghanistan."

The CASF provides a vital role in getting the wounded war heroes home, but the flight commander wanted to make sure to give credit to those fighting outside the wire.

"We are in a supporting role here," Thompson said. "We're not the ones getting shot at or getting hit with improvised explosive devices. We support our warriors, but as medics that's our part. We do see all the bad, but we are not in the thick of it. You go through the gamut of emotions. Since I have been here, I have seen 55 people who have passed."

Though they do see horrific things at the CASF, it is nothing compared to what the men and women in the field are going through, Thompson continued.

"When we get the call that patients with severe injuries are coming in and you don't know if they are going to make it or not and then they do make it. . . knowing they were able to be saved is the best thing about working in the CASF," Wallace said.