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thedrifter
12-28-05, 08:34 AM
Santa Ana, Calif. native keeps Marines battle-ready
2nd Marine Division
Story by Cpl. Adam C. Schnell

HADITHA DAM, Iraq (Dec. 27, 2005) -- Known as one of a Marine’s best friends, the Navy field corpsman spends most of his time keeping Marines healthy and battle-ready while operating in the most hostile combat environments.

Santa Ana, Calif., native, Petty Officer 2nd Class Carlos A. Lopez, not only spends his day performing basic corpsman duties but also keeps Marines in the fight as a physical therapy technician.

“Muscle-skeletal injuries are my bread and butter,” said the 26-year-old Lopez. “It is a great feeling when you see a Marine who was hurt but after a treatment plan, is back to doing everything they did before they got injured.”

As a physical therapy technician, Lopez treats patients on an almost daily basis for common injuries in Iraq, dealing with knees, ankles, and lower back problems. The amount of patrolling with more than 50 pounds of combat gear keeps the corpsman gainfully employed.

“I have three patients I see regularly right now,” Lopez commented. “But with Marines out at the bases all the time, some of my other patients I don’t see except every once in a while.”

When a Marine comes into the battalion aid station with a muscle-skeletal injury, they see Lopez, who spends time taking down symptoms, performing a physical exam and then coming up with a treatment plan. After talking with the medical officer and gaining approval, Lopez puts his treatment plan into affect, hopefully bringing the Marine back to 100 percent combat effectiveness.

“Seeing people progress from an injury to being 100 percent again is what makes the job great,” said Lopez, a 1997 San Marcos High School graduate.

Becoming a physical therapy technician in the Navy takes weeks of training. Because it was something Lopez really wanted to do, he got his chance to see what the therapy course had to offer after going on a deployment and being part of two different Marine units.

The eight-year Navy veteran got to test his skills as a physical therapy technician right after graduating the course. He was stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill., where he worked for almost three years with Navy recruits performing initial training.

“It was there that I really found out physical therapy was my thing,” he commented. “It was most rewarding actually seeing the recruits fully recuperate, graduate and become a part of the Navy.”

Along with his physical therapy technician duties, Lopez treats sick and wounded Marines who come from the field. He also helps treat Iraqi civilians and ensures the battalion’s area is free of insurgent activity.

“When a wounded Iraqi civilian comes in and has to be treated, I don’t see any difference than any other patient we have in here,” Lopez said. “To me, a patient is a patient, there is no difference.”

While treating patients on a daily basis, Lopez also takes time to help the junior corpsmen with any questions they might have. His collateral duties also include filing daily reports on patients and helping the medical officers with many matters that affect the BAS.

Helping the medical officers is something Lopez would like to do once done with his deployment. His plans include finishing his associate’s degree and putting in a package to be a physician’s assistant, which will further his career that he hopes lasts longer than 20 years.

“I would like to become a physician’s assistant, who is basically alongside the doctor at all times,” commented Lopez. “It is something I have wanted to do for a while now.”

And all the experiences he has had with the battalion while in Iraq may give him that chance to see another aspect of being a Navy corpsman.

Ellie

thedrifter
12-28-05, 08:37 AM
Corpsmen help Marines stay in touch <br />
2nd Marine Division <br />
Story by Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Zahn <br />
<br />
CAMP BAHARIA, Iraq (Dec. 27, 2005) -- For many Marines and their families, staying in touch with...

thedrifter
12-31-05, 07:34 AM
Navy hospital corpsmen rely on instinct
Most of those called "Doc" work far away from a facility, and many will head to Iraq.
BY JIM HODGES
l 247-4633
December 30, 2005

PORTSMOUTH -- The pictures on the auditorium walls are of colleagues in spirit, missing now and probably dead for more than 30 years.

Upstairs, more pictures and citations tell stories of the 22 Navy corpsmen who have earned the Medal of Honor.

Fourteen corpsmen have died in Iraq in the past three years.

At any one time, 300 to 500 more are being taught in the building at Portsmouth Naval Hospital that they call the "schoolhouse."

Most will leave to work in hospitals or on ships, where their hope is to earn status that has nothing to do with military rank.

They just want to be "Doc."

"It's awesome," says Chief Travis Prowant, who teaches advanced X-ray techniques at the school. "You have your finger on the pulse of the ship all the time. You're Doc, and when you become Doc to your crew, you attain a whole new level of respect. ... When you walk down the passageway, it's, 'Hey Doc, how you doin' today?' 'Hey Doc, com'ere, look at this. I got this thing growing on my leg.' "

It doesn't matter whether you're an X-ray specialist like Prowant, or a psychiatric technician like HM2 Frank Hein or a pharmacist's technician like HM2 Jason Hara, who earned his title when a sailor on an adjacent ship jumped off a mast, several stories above a pier.

"It was my first duty on a new ship," Hara explains. "At one in the morning, I get this screeching call ... about a man down on the pier. ...

"The weird thing is being new on the ship and everybody's looking to you for guidance. 'What do we do? What do you want us to do?' It was, 'Go call the ambulance. Go get the stretcher.' "

The sailor died.

Still "it was the turning point for me on that ship," Hara says. "Now you're the doc."

They tell the stories to the sailors they teach. Those students have made it through Hospital Corpsman School at Great Lakes, Ill., and are in Portsmouth for training in one of 15 specialties. Some of their Great Lakes classmates were diverted to Fleet Marine Force training at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Corpsmen call it "going to the Marines."

Some sailors ask their Navy recruiters to send them to the Marines. Most don't, says Prowant, "but if they get sent, I don't hear anybody complaining, either. It's, 'I've got duty, and I need to go.' "

Adds HM2 David Sisk, who teaches surgical technicians in Portsmouth and has two tours in Iraq with the Marines: "Some of them want to be a hero. A lot of people, their image of corpsmen is what they see in a John Wayne movie.

"Me, I walked into a recruiting office and said I wanted to join up and I wanted the medical field. I didn't specify that I wanted the Marines."

But he got them, going into Iraq in the 2003 invasion, then going back a year later. That's when he learned about the Golden Hour, the 60 minutes after an injury in which the greatest chance exists for saving a patient.

The lesson was as harsh as it was indelible.

"It was April of '04," Sisk says. "An ambulance got there and the back door opened up. We saw feet sticking out. You could see from a distance that the one on the bottom right side wasn't doing too good. He was a Marine, 19-20 years old.

"You know that hour of golden time? We soon found out that he was about an hour and a half post injury. This was the first time that somebody came off my O.R. table and went into a body bag in post op."

He tells the story quietly, and around a table, everybody nods with understanding and empathy.

"There was a third-class petty officer who was in a Humvee and a (roadside bomb in Iraq) exploded and the Humvee was on his leg and he was still taking care of people," says HM2 Michael Craven, who did time in the 1990s with the Marines in Somalia. "That's the kind of stuff that goes on in the Hospital Corps."

What goes on in Portsmouth is training in classes that can last as long as 54 weeks. Most sailors pass the same national certification tests that civilians do, then go on to a hospital or a ship.

"Oftentimes the skills you learn here become your collateral duty," Prowant says. "Once you get out into the field, your No. 1 job is being a sailor, No. 2 is being a corpsman."

Many of the instructors moonlight at area hospitals. What they teach at Portsmouth fills a vocational reservoir.

"At the start of hostilities (in Iraq) in March of 2003, we were sitting off the coast of Kuwait when we got a call that we had incoming wounded Marines," Prowant says. "Instinct took over and we set up our mass casualty triage. All of the training we had been doing came to fruition."

Adds Craven: "At some point, you kind of go into an automatic mode. It doesn't matter whether it's on a battlefield or a casualty on a ship, you go into automatic mode and everything you've been trained and taught to do kind of kicks in."

There is a fear factor. In combat, there has to be. But often it's overcome by the fear of failure.

"It's not about self," Craven says. "I personally wouldn't want to have to tell somebody's mother or father or wife or daughter that I couldn't take care of him because I was a little too scared and couldn't focus on him. That I was more worried about me."

Ellie

thedrifter
01-04-06, 08:01 AM
El Pasoan gets medal for saving life in Iraq
Chris Roberts
El Paso Times
Wednesday, January 4, 2006

A Hanks High School graduate has been awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for saving the life of one Marine and evacuating and treating 60 others while under fire in Fallujah, Iraq.

Hospitalman Daniel Stephen Avila, 20, was given the medal in July for actions while assigned to a forward aid station in Fallujah for nearly four months in 2004 and early 2005. He was there in November 2004 during Operation Al Fajr when the Marines swept through the town, which was a hotbed of insurgent activity at the time.

The medical station was moved closer to the front in the Fallujah Mayor's Complex, Avila said, because "by the time the Marines were getting back to us, it was too late, they were dead."

Avila said he and his comrades stayed awake nearly around the clock for a week at one point taking wave after wave of casualties and hanging blankets over the windows at night so as not to attract sniper fire. Nonetheless, the station received fire from machine guns and rocket propelled grenades and survived a suicide bomber who exploded an oil tanker about 20 feet from the complex, he said.

According to the citation, Avila "quickly assessed a Marine suffering from a serious venous bleed resulting from a gunshot wound to the leg. He located and stopped the bleeding which saved the Marine's life. As he treated patients he was continuously in the line of direct and indirect enemy fires. Disregarding his own safety, he endured continuous combat conditions while evacuating and treating 60 urgent and priority combat casualties."

Avila said those 60 Marines suffered serious wounds and may have died if not treated quickly. The medal is awarded for performance that clearly exceeds expectations that stem from the individual's experience, training and rank.

Avila is a sailor who was attached to the Headquarters and Service Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 7, 1st Marine Division. He is now in California with a special operations training group that is part of the 2nd Marine Division.

He said he expects to return to Iraq sometime between April and June.

"I was incredibly proud to hear he was awarded the medal," said Avila's mother, Irma Brooks, who is director of the Radford School. "But as a mother, I was shocked and perturbed that his life was in such serious danger."

Of his impending re- deployment to Iraq, Brooks said, "I'm hoping the situation will change and he'll be safe."

Avila attended Montwood High before graduating from Hanks in 2002. He went to New Mexico State University before enlisting in the Navy. He said he plans to get an associate's degree of nursing while still in the service and then enter medical school after he gets out. His specialty will be trauma, he said.

"I'd like to work in an emergency room," Avila said. "There's no better feeling than saving somebody's life and there's no worse feeling than having someone die in your arms."

Chris Roberts may be reached at chrisr@elpasotimes.com; 546-6136.

Ellie