A Blast of Cool Air
Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. James E. Stalter, of Como, N.C., sent this story from his daughter, Lisa A. Blazer, a chief hospital corpsman in the Navy stationed with the Marines near the Iraqi border. Lisa e-mailed this story to her parents in April. Dad says her methods are sometimes graphic but almost always effective. 

We’ve had an air conditioner since we got here. It was put in under duress, and of course the engineers made it seem like a favor. It has worked one day since we’ve been here, and I gave up calling the engineers to get it fixed.

When the temperatures seriously started to rise, the lieutenant colonel in charge asked me what my plan was for heat casualties. I said, “We will spray them with water from a spray bottle, put a fan on them, and pray.” He was shocked. I explained that my air conditioner did not work, and without a cool space to take a heat casualty, we might as well pray.

He told me the command-and-control tent had two air conditioners and was quite cool, so I could take the casualty there. I argued that I didn’t think it a good plan to have to take a casualty all the way over to another tent and haul all my equipment down there, then violate the patient’s privacy just because no one cared enough about medical to arrange for us to have a functioning air conditioner. And by the way, I told him, it amazed me that the computers in the command tent were more important than the people of the camp. He was unmoved.

Shortly after that, a young (and very big) Marine was found unresponsive out in the heat. Actually, we had treated him for a heat-related illness before. We immediately took him to the command -and-control tent (which had about 20 people in it at the time) and proceeded to treat him the way we do all heat casualties: We undressed him, sprayed him down, took a rectal temp, and started an IV— all in the middle of the office. The Marines were trying to help by staying out of our way while at the same time erecting a sort of privacy curtain around us—-too late, of course. Things have to move fast when you suspect someone’s temperature might be too high.

As it turns out, the Marine was fine. He was suffering from heat exhaustion, which is bad but not as bad as heat stroke. After a few hours, we moved him out of there, and we’ll be sending him home.

We’d been back in our (sauna-like) tent for 15 minutes when the engineers showed up with an air conditioner (from where, they wouldn’t say) and hooked it up. Thirty minutes later our tent was nice and cool. It’s amazing what’ll move some people to act.

Maybe I was a bit dramatic with the rectal temp part ...