The Night I Didn’t Have a Medical Kit.

The Night I Didn’t Have a Medical Kit.

It was the late 2000’s and I was at my first duty station at RAF Lakenheath, UK. I was a young know-it-all medic assigned to the Medical/Surgical Ward, tucked way away in a hospital doing the exact opposite of what people picture when they hear military medic. My job was the definition of why the Air Force calls their Medics “Aerospace Medical Technicians” instead of Corpsman, Combat Medic, etc. I yearned to be out in the field doing what I thought I signed up for. I volunteered my off days and switched my schedule around often to assist the SERE (Survival Resistance and Escape) dudes when they did survival refreshers, I worked nights so that my days were spent out with Security Forces, Special Tactics and the British RAF assisting with pre-deployment training as OPFOR (bad guy), as well as being the medic on standby. In other words, I thought I was pretty awesome for going above and beyond. I thought I was a great medic. I was wrong.

The night I didn’t have my medical kit began with a friend offering up some concert tickets to a band I’d never heard of in the town of Milton Keynes. The concert was a good time, and if my memory serves me correctly, it was a Punk/Alternative Band. Standard Operating Procedure for these concerts is a mosh pit, which I found myself in the middle of, bouncing around and jumping to the music. I helped folks get up and wasn’t particularly “ruthless” while moshing. What came to me as a surprise was the moisture I felt on my shirt about an hour into the concert, I hadn’t spilled a beer and no one around me had either. I felt a small hole in my shirt and left the pit to head to the bathroom where lighting was ample.

I found myself staring at blood and realized that I had been stabbed. I didn’t feel the knife nor see a culprit at the time (he was never found, Constables assumed it was gang initiation to stab a Yank) but here I was looking at a hole in my lower right quadrant. I wasn’t bleeding profusely and didn’t have any organs sticking out (evisceration). Now here I was in the middle of a town I’d never been to with a wound from an item that I thought was banned. Side note: In the UK, knives are banned as much as guns in California. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you have to have a reason to even have a knife in your car (i.e chef or gardener). What was most concerning though is that I didn’t have a med kit. I had all the training I could ask for, knew how to do chest tubes, IV’s, proficient in tourniquet use, etc; yet here I was bleeding without a med kit anywhere to be found. What good was the knowledge now? I felt queasy, now recognizing the pain in my abdomen and concerned the knife had punctured my peritoneum (gut sack for you hunter types), I slowly bent over, removed my 2 day old sock and packed my wound. Sterile, it was not, but it did well to control the bleeding as I didn’t have to use my other sock later. All of that aside, I knew I had to get to an Emergency Room quick.

I didn’t trust the National Health Service (British Healthcare) due to the precautions we had to take with our patients whenever they transferred back to the base after receiving care from NHS. A very high amount had MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) a super bug that’s resistant to a ton of antibiotics. So, should I have just went to a Hospital there? You bet, but again, I was young and dumb. So, we started the hour and half return journey to the base.

Luckily, I’m all healed up, but it was a close call. I thought I was a good medic. I was trained and prepared mentally to render aid when needed. Though, without my kit I was no better off than anyone else in a similar situation, just hoping for the best and driving as fast as I could to get to a higher level of care.

During that drive I thought over and over again about why I didn’t carry a kit on me. I carried one literally everywhere I went in uniform, so why should it be any different out of uniform? I cursed at myself knowing that had the knife gone deeper I could have really been in trouble. I vowed that day to never go without a med kit again because even in a country that bans knives, I was stabbed, and it was that ONE time that being unprepared could’ve cost me my life. The time chose me and I wasn’t ready and I’ll never make that mistake again.