My second day as a flight nurse

My second day found me with my muscles cramping, my hair limp, my back sore, and with red-rimmed eyes. My 24-hour shift turned into 28 ½ hours.

It’s 10 am. We got called out for a neonatal transport from Sacramento to Reno and back to Sacramento again. That’s not so bad. We take a team of neonatal nurses with us, fly them to Reno, get them into an ambulance to go pickup their baby, wait for them to get back, and fly them back to Sacramento. No problem. This is a transport isolette:

It weighs about 350 pounds. We have to fit all that on a stretcher plus a full oxygen tank and a full tank of compressed air into an EMS sled and fit it and all personnel into the aircraft. Hey, that is the easy part. It is lifting the sled with the isolette in it from an ambulance stretcher to the ramp and securing it inside the aircraft that really creates the challenge. Imagine me pulling and pushing on this thing with all its weight and getting it situated inside. Yes, that would explain my cramping muscles and my sore back. I read somewhere how good the workman’s comp is for this company. Maybe I should read about that benefit some more.