U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Ian Krug, a critical care nurse with the 59th Medical Wing, stationed at Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas, augments the intensive care unit at University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, November 14, 2020. He, along with approximately 60 service members, are working jointly with the civilian hospitals to assist in the mitigation of COVID-19 and help citizens in need. U.S. Northern Command, through U.S. Army North, remains committed to providing flexible Department of Defense support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in support of the whole-of-America COVID-19 response. (U.S. Army video by Sgt. Samantha Hall)
Transcript
Hi, my name is First Lieutenant Krug. I’m a critical care nurse out of Lackland Air Force Base, 59th medical wing. Just before we learned about our entire team deploying to El Paso, we were on a 48 hour call. Friday, I believe the 8th of November is when we were notified. About an hour and a half later, we were on civilian aircraft to El Paso in our efforts to essentially move our medical team here in order to prep for the care that we’re doing here at University Medical Center. Absolutely, yeah. So some of the patients that we saw at the 59th Medical Wing in San Antonio, obviously critically ill with this COVID-19 virus, very similar patient load here in El Paso. Again, it, it seems like the, the wave of COVID-19 is just sort of shifted from San Antonio, maybe middle of Texas, Southern Texas, now to the Western part of Texas, there’s still extraordinarily critically ill patients here and in dire need of our help. Absolutely, it’s been an extraordinarily smooth process to integrate into the civilian medical centers here really since day one we’ve been a part of the family, both at University Medical Center, Del Sol Medical Center, and Transmountain Medical Center. We’ve done nothing but really work hand in hand with the civilian staff here. They’re happy to have us and we’re happy to be here supporting them. Absolutely, so it’s a medical team deploying out of the 59th Medical Wing from the Air Force, but we have an extraordinary amount of support from Army North as well, whether that be our logistic staff or public affairs office, our stress management team and our chaplain team, we truly wouldn’t be as well off as we are here in El Paso without the support of the Army North. Absolutely, so some, some of the experiences we’ve had with the patients, myself and our other the medical staff included, what I think everyone needs to understand is being critically ill sometimes it means that you’re not necessarily having face to face interactions with your patients, but rather their family members. So, a lot of what we do is with our family members every now and then we will see a great, a great outcome where, you know, the patient’s able to get off the ventilator, our therapies are working. We do discharge them from the intensive care unit to a med surgical unit. And then they’re, they’re just in a few short weeks back home and able to get over this virus. So there are absolutely some, some diamonds in the rough here. Absolutely, I think sort of in a time of crisis like this, it’s okay to call on those for help. Absolutely, even in San Antonio, we had many days that we were in a sense, very busy with patients, and now its sort of shifted to the El Paso community. The medical team out of San Antonio from the Air Force, as well as Army North is very excited to be here. Very excited to support the community and are putting meritorious efforts in order to combat this virus.