Denali medics render aid on Parks Highway

  • Published
  • By Army Staff Sgt. Mark Shrewsbury
  • 4/25th IBCT Public Affairs
DONNELLY TRAINING AREA --  Denali medics assigned to the Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 1st Squadron (Airborne), 40th Cavalry Regiment, gave emergency medical aid to an Alaska man Sept. 8. The unit had been traveling in a convoy en route to Donnelly Training Area, near Fort Greely, when the occupants of its lead vehicle came into view of a late-model pickup truck that had rolled over.

"On the way up to training, we received radio notification from a vehicle ahead of us in the convoy that there had been a motor vehicle accident," said Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Wahler, a medic and native of Fort Knox, Ky., assigned to HHT, 1-40th Cavalry. "At the time, I didn't know that it was a civilian until we actually got up to where the accident happened."
Wahler said when they received the call, all they were told was that there was a person with a laceration to their head.

He discovered the man had significant injuries to the head. He immediately directed another medic, Spc. Randy Sickles, a native of Harrod, Ohio, to get the medical equipment needed to provide emergency treatment to the man.

"Sgt. 1st Class Wahler acted very quickly and without any sign of uncertainty or delay," Sickles said. "He began evaluating the casualty and telling me what he needed without missing a beat."

After immobilizing his neck and strapping him onto a spine board, Wahler and Sickles provided emergency medical care at the scene of the accident, while civilian emergency medical personnel drove to the site. The medic team then moved the man into their field litter ambulance and out of the wet and cold. Working as a team, the pair began the steps to provide oxygen to their patient.

"The man was not alert to what was really going on," Wahler said. "Any time I asked him questions, he didn't really have an answer for me. I could tell him something, like a color, and he wouldn't remember what color I told him a few seconds later."

The two medics provided medical aid to the best of their abilities for nearly half an hour before an ambulance appeared on the scene. Once help arrived, they explained everything they had done for the man in detail ... an action that is required of any medical professional transferring a patient into another physician's care.

The Spartan paratroopers of the 1-40th Cavalry set out once more after the ambulance rushed away but not without hopes and prayers the man would recover and be up and around soon.