Thursday, March 10, 2011

USMC Soilder and the Brits

It has been very busy for up to today. It has been warmer and as the saying goes: "Kinetic activity has increased. Which is not unexpected.
Several days ago we had a USMC casualty come in with some of the most severe injuries we have seen so far. He required over 50 units of pRBCs, 50+ units of FFP (yes it is 1:1 here) plts and cryo.  He also got Factor VIIA which is almost never heard of ...AND he ended up with 4 units of Fresh Whole Blood (FWB). We could talk about FWB for pages, but here it is kind of considered a miracle drug in that it seems to be able to pretty much reverse intractable coagulopathy.  The way it works is that a walking blood bank (WBB) is set up: meaning that people all over the two bases are pre-screened and then when needed the it is activated and people come in an donate a unit of blood which is then quickly processed and given to the patient. IT IS STILL WARM AS IT GOES INTO THE PATIENT!  I have seen the results and yes it can be pretty dramatic.
But again...that is not the real story here...Usually for US forces CMP Leatherneck (US) WBB is activated and US donors are taken to give blood. And the same for the Brits..usually British at Camp Bastion are brought in to donate for the Brits. Nothing special...just the way it is set up.  Turns out it was very difficult to get the US WBB activated in time...so the Brits donated the blood. But it doesn't end there. It turns one of the donors was the SNO (pronounced snow = Senior Nurse Office for the Brits) and the other was the British nurse taking care of him in the ICU!!!!!  When I thanked him he looked at me and gave a shrug and said in a nonchalant way that only a Brit could do: "IT was the least I could do." Truly amazing. You really have love the Brits.

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