To celebrate this 4th of July, EMSResponder.com would like to recognize our country's military emergency medical services providers. In the first installment of what we hope will become on ongoing feature, we are highlighting individual providers: hospital corpsmen Benjamin and Emily Nunez, a married couple serving in Kuwait. If you are a military EMS provider overseas, or the friend/family of one of these personnel and would like to send in your story and photo, please email Heather.Caspi@cygnusb2b.com.

HM3 Benjamin Nunez:
441st Ambulance Det, Camp Virginia, Kuwait
Home station: MCRD Parris Island, Beaufort SC
Hometown: Boulder Creek, CA

Daily Routine

• Wake up at 0600 and get ready for the day, shower, put on uniform, etc.
• Go to muster at 0730, make sure everyone is at work, and information is passed down at this time.
• Call my wife, and tell her I love her.
• Go to breakfast sometimes.
• Go inspect the ambulances, general overview, make sure there are no leaks, check fluid levels, tire pressure, make sure they start, all lights work. Also check all medical supplies in the back.
• Go back inside the office, do a crossword puzzle with coworkers. It seems silly, but for me and my friends it keeps our minds sharp, and it makes us feel like we are someway close to our respective homes.
• Clean the office, and other spaces, also this is the time we do any other work from our Army chain of command, taking inventory of supplies. This is also the time we help in the clinic if they need it, seeing patients, cleaning, and errands for our higher ups.
• Go to lunch with the guys on days I am on call, and then I call my wife afterwards. On days I'm not on call, I go to my room to see if my wife wants to get on webcam, if she doesn't I let her sleep, and I just listen to music until I have to go back to work.
• Return to work; check to see if there are anymore tasks that were decided on while at lunch. See if the clinic needs any help with patients again.
• Check to see if I have any mail, it always makes me smile.
• Clean the office at the end of the work day.
• Go to afternoon muster; see what news is to be passed from the day.
• On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I go to the gym after work, and then I come home and wake my wife up, if she is still sleeping. If I don't go to the gym, I come home to relax and spend time with my wife.
• My wife works nights, so after work, we just talk to each other on the computer, with webcam, until she goes to work or I go to sleep. This is the best part of my day, over here she has been my rock, and she is what keeps me strong.
• Then I wake up and do it all over, counting one less day until my wife and I leave.

GETTING A CALL-----Can happen any time 24/7

There are 3 ways we can get a call for an on base run. We can get a call from MRO (Medical Regulating Office), telling us what happened and where to go. We can get a 911 call that rings on our phone or the phone in the clinic. Or we can hear the fire department being dispatched over the radio, in which case we weren't called, we just overheard. So the call is on base, we run to the ambulance and get to wherever we need to be... if the fire department is there, they will let us know if they need our help or not. If they do we have to wait for them to declare the scene safe, if it were a fire or something. We find out what we are dealing with, chest pain, dislocated knee, whatever, call back to the doctor on call at the TMC and let them know what they have coming in.

If we have a call that requires us to go off base, we can only leave if dispatched by MRO. So we get the call from MRO, telling us where off base to go. We have to run and get our weapons, M-16 for the Army medics and 9mm for the Corpsman, we have to make sure we have our OPM, and then we can leave. If we have our lights on they usually don't stop us at the security gates, which is good. We arrive on scene, make sure it is safe, and then proceed with our assessment of the patient(s). Most of the calls off base are for MVA's so we already have the mindset for possible broken limbs, head and spine injuries, and blunt force trauma. In any case we stabilize the patient and call back to the TMC and let the doctor know what's coming. Then we transport as fast and as safe as we can.

HN Emily Nunez:
Medical Regulating Office, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait
Home station: MCRD Parris Island, Beaufort SC
Hometown: Findlay, Ohio

Daily Routine

• Get home around 0600, and go to the gym for an hour or so.
• Come home wait for Ben's call, shower then go to bed.
• 1000-1200 go to the pool! Highlight of my life here, besides talking my husband.
• Come home meet my husband for lunch on the webcam.
• Go back to bed till 1530 when he gets home, or on Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1630 and then get on the webcam till 2000.
• I say "goodnight" to him at 2000-2100 and then begin getting my shower and uniform ready for work.
• 2135 I depart my barracks for work. I work about 15 minutes from where I live, walking distance. In these 110-plus degrees it's tiring even late at night.
• I get to work around 2150 and do a turn over of all the accidents and medevacs that took place during the day shift.
• 2230 I begin to do my shift report. We track all the medevac in the AOR, so it is very time consuming sometimes.
• 2330 I go to the DFAC for dinner, we call it "midrats"
• The rest the night from about 0000-0200 are down time, I email and write letters to my husband and friends and family back home.
• 0200 I start our Morning report, that is where we inform all of the officers and higher ups of all the accidents and medevac that took place the previous day.
• 0545 we do a turn over of all the events that happened through the night, and then we go home for the day.

I work for MRO, Medical Regulating Office. We are like the "911 Dispatch" people for all of the AOR. We send and track patients from Iraq; Tallil, Basrah, BUcca, Kirkuk, Mosul, Balad. Germany; Ramstein, Landstuhl, and other countries like Kuwait, and Qatar. So we can get EXTREMELY busy sometimes. When there is an accident or call we are the first to find out and we dispatch the proper means of transportation to them. They can be transported 2 ways, air or ground medevac'ed helicopter or by ambulance. All of our patients that are coming across the Kuwait border are transported by air, then once they get to our country we will determine the severity of the situation and then sometimes they will be brought the other hour and a half by ground... doesn't happen much but has happened due to limited air assets due to other missions. We use a lot of the ground ambulance company from the camps most the time. We have the 441st Ambulance Det here with us now; they are here on Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, Camp Virginia, Ali Al Salem, and KNB.

Once we determine the proper mode of transportation we call the crew and relay the "9 --Line," which is 9 lines of all the important info needed about the patient. Then the crews will leave and go to the scene of the accident, and if it was a 911 call from their own base they will call us with the 9-line and keep us informed of all the details while in transit here to Camp Arifjan. Once the crew - ground or air - drop off the patient they inform us so we can jot it down. We track EVERY patient movement from the time they leave their base to the time they return back to their base. Through the whole process we send out updates to the command via email to keep everyone aware of all the patients coming into our hospital. It's a very tedious job, you have to make the right calls and know how long it takes by air/ ground varying between all the situations.

I think it is interesting how I work for MRO and my husband is attached to the 441st Ambulance Co out of Camp Virginia, so some of the calls I get I am dispatching him! That can be good or bad, I always get nervous dispatching him in the sandstorms or at night due to the visibility, but he has a good head on his shoulders and I know he would never do anything to jeopardize coming home to me!