News From the Cause
Medics Act First, Sort Through Emotions Later: JOURNAL-SENTINEL, MILWAUKEE
August 01, 2011
Forward Operating Base Pasab, Afghanistan - Like most military medics, Sgt. Trevor Krizan knows intimately what bombs, shrapnel and bullets can do to humans, but he doesn't let the violence affect him.
Until later.
"Any medic that doesn't second-guess themselves is lying," said Krizan, 36, of Merrill.
In the moment, while they're feverishly working to save their comrade's life, medics dissociate themselves from the pain, the screaming, the crying, he said. But they relive it later and ask themselves if they could have done more.
"I've taken everything from collecting an amputated limb from someone . . . who stepped on a land mine and carrying it back to an aid station, to a guy with a hole in his chest from a rocket," said Krizan, a nurse at the VA hospital in Wausau.
Krizan and the five other medics of Wausau-based Army Reserve 428th Engineer Company have seen their share of trauma on this deployment to southern Afghanistan. Since the combat engineers drive daily road clearance missions looking for IEDs - often finding them and triggering blasts - the medics have handled numerous casualties.
Injuries from bomb blasts - which are mostly absorbed by the heavily armored vehicles they drive - include concussions, cuts, internal injuries and broken bones. Tragically, the 428th has also suffered more severe injuries, including a double amputation below the knee and another soldier paralyzed from the chest down.
The soldiers also lost one of their own - Cpl. Justin Ross of Green Bay, who was shot to death on a mission in March.
The unit's senior medic, Sgt. Andrea Hornor, 27, of Indianapolis, wears a black metal bracelet with Ross' name and date of his death. Like all medics, she relies on her training and experience to help her cope with seeing a fellow soldier in pain, focusing on what she needs to do to treat their injuries.
"Then later when you think about it, you get upset and want to go kick whoever's ass who did this," said Hornor. Click here to view more
