Air Force Pararescue Team Saves Sick Baby 1,000 Miles Out at Sea

As members of the world's most specialized combat and civilian search and rescue team, the men had performed dozens of missions around the world, but this rescue was different. The voice on the radio wanting help hadn't changed multiple times as it often did in war—meaning the caller had been tragically killed or injured—nor were pararescuemen (PJs) being inserted from a helo on a hoist line while taking fire; there weren't any injured soldiers on the ground needing tourniquets, chest decompressions to relieve a tension pneumothorax or ketamine for the pain, but, despite this, the pucker factor on this mission was real and rising. There was a critically ill baby girl on a crippled sailboat a thousand miles off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The weather was awful and seas were a mess. The last the team had heard was that Rebel Heart, the 36-foot sailboat on which the Kaufman family was sailing, was taking on water, and that Lyra, their youngest, had been ill for days with nausea, vomiting, and a fever, and was now growing lethargic and pale. The PJs didn't need their paramedic school textbook to know this was a life-or-death emergency and all of their training and experience was about to be tested. After dropping the smoke flares, the C-130 banked low on the horizon, turned and flew another pass to insert the team. With ocean rescues in unruly seas, it wasn't uncommon to spot a boat or person once, only to have them disappear from sight forever among the rolling wave...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Rescue & Vehicle Extrication Patient Care Source Type: news