HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. —
“Is there a physician on board?”
Sitting in his aisle seat towards the again of a business flight, Air Pressure Workers Sgt. William Flaspoehler noticed the flight attendants scrambling for assist.
It was Could 2023, and Flaspoehler was touring to a deployed location in Southeast Asia.
He walked to the entrance of the cabin and located a 64-year-old girl, pale-faced, sweating and clutching her chest in ache.
After observing her signs, he checked the girl’s pulse and blood stress.
“We have to divert and land as quickly as doable,” he informed the pilots, figuring out the girl would quickly go into cardiac arrest.
From there, Flaspoehler stated he relied on each intuition and expertise. He adopted chest ache protocols, positioned the passenger on oxygen and gave her aspirin and fluids. Subsequent, he examined a bottle of nitroglycerin: a drug that would doubtlessly stabilize the affected person, however may be deadly.
“I knew I needed to do it,” he stated. “It was hectic, however I knew she didn’t have a lot time.”
Because the plane started its descent to the closest airport, Flaspoehler labored to maintain the girl alive.
For Flaspoehler, an unbiased responsibility medical technician with the twenty third Particular Techniques Squadron at Hurlburt Area, Florida, offering life-saving care is nearly second nature.
His journey to that second started years earlier than he joined the navy.
Earlier than enlisting within the Air Pressure in 2016, Flaspoehler honed his medical expertise as a civilian emergency medical technician in Los Angeles. Later, his profession led him to a level-one pediatric trauma middle at LA Youngsters’s Hospital. There, he handled a number of the most critically injured sufferers possible, he stated.
“We responded to automobile accidents, fires, stabbings … just about all the things possible,” he stated. “As an entire, these jobs uncovered me to a variety of medical incidents.”
Flaspoehler stated that a type of incidents specifically left him wanting one thing extra in life.
Sooner or later, the previous EMT discovered himself behind an ambulance, rushing via the streets of Los Angeles, treating a person bleeding closely from a neck wound.
As he packed the wound to stem the bleeding, the identical thought continued to flash via his thoughts: the harm was eerily just like the one which had killed his buddy, fallen Military Sgt. Michael Cable, who died in Afghanistan in 2013.
Flaspoehler stated that within the second, he tried not to consider Cable’s demise. However afterward, he started to dwell on it. He couldn’t shake the sensation that he might be serving a better goal, he stated.
“I wished to have the ability to be there to see and deal with my associates and brothers and sisters,” Flaspoehler stated. “As a civilian, I used to be normally treating strangers. I wished to be with a staff and have the duty of taking good care of them.”
That realization drove him to affix the Air Pressure.
As a part of the twenty third STS, Flaspoehler’s work is dynamic. His unit is tasked with missions involving austere airfield management, terminal assault management, personnel rescue and restoration, assault zone battlefield trauma care, and extra.
In his position as an IDMT, he’s skilled to ascertain medical therapy services in distant and hostile environments.
“I can run a 911 name, choose up an lively responsibility affected person, deal with them as a paramedic, convey them to the emergency room after which deal with them and discharge them,” Flaspoehler stated. “This type of place doesn’t actually exist within the civilian world.”
He additionally supplies medical help throughout high-risk actions like airborne bounce operations and dives, and trains personnel on Tactical Fight Casualty Care to arrange them for potential life-and-death eventualities.
“Sooner or later, it might be their buddy that wants assist on the market,” he stated, referring to fallen Military Soldier Cable.
On the flight, the 64-year-old affected person’s blood stress and coronary heart price returned to more healthy ranges and the medication diminished her ache.
Quickly after, the flight landed in Kuching, Malaysia, the place Flaspoehler helped first responders carry the girl off the airplane and to an ambulance.
After arriving at his deployed location in Southeast Asia, Flaspoehler adopted up on the affected person’s standing: the girl had survived after receiving further care in Kuching.
“I felt relieved that I made the best name,” he stated. “Whereas it was one thing I had dealt with so many occasions earlier than, I had by no means needed to do one thing like this on a airplane, in worldwide waters.”
Finally, Flaspoehler stated he credit the medical expertise he gained as a civilian and within the Air Pressure.
“Realizing what to do and being prepared could make all of the distinction.”
By SSgt Natalie Fiorilla
twenty fourth Particular Operations Wing
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