Surgical Nursing
I enjoyed working as a surgical scrub tech in the Navy. It was a job that was immensely rewarding and a constant learning environment.
Working with other nurses and surgeons was an everyday evolving classroom. Diving and working as an IDC / DMT was also rewarding. As I transitioned from surgery to diving and back to surgery in war zones and hospitals and then I started travel nursing.
Working as a civilian contract nurse I was hired in Afghanistan as an embedded instructor for a tactical medicine Medical Officer Course. I worked some for what was on par for Doctors without Borders with Dr. Gary Davis. He used to be an Army Surgeon General for Afghanistan and was active duty and located in Afghanistan. After he retired, we both worked out of Kabul’s Camp Eggers. The Afghani Military Medical Institutes is located four to five kilometers from Camp Eggers and had six roadblocks and check points in between.
I was asking about the job they did to repatriate one US personnel involved in a fatal airline crash in the Hindu Kush. Flight 112 on 17 May 2010 with 44 personnel on board (May they all RIP). John S. explained they used more than 50 body bags for the 800 plus parts and remains and they had help with collecting and tagging all remains.
All the body parts needed to be matched up by using mitochondrial matching. This was accomplished by matching the flight list of names to a direct maternal relatives and creating a maternal mitochondrial DNA match list. This list was used to identify all parts so they could then be patronized to their respective countries.
