There’s turbulence, and then there is turbulence:

The other night I was flown out to a small community at 1 am on a medivac plane for “breathing problems” only to discover a patient in extremis from status asthmaticus. ETT, steroids, multiple puffers via tube, permissive hypercapnea to prevent barotrauma, and a ketamine infusion later, I managed to get the patient to an ICU alive. The real trouble was trying to bag a patient on the medivac flight during an electrical storm (there is no ventilator on the medivac plane – the old one broke and the new one is not here yet). I now know when the pilots yell at me that it’s going to get rough, it REALLY gets rough. Apparently all flights up here had been cancelled that afternoon prior to the medivac and didn’t resume until the afternoon after the medivac (this includes the big 747 that comes into Inuvik every day). Looking out the front of the cockpit when we came in to land was friggin nuts. The view of the runway was disturbing as the runway would be in view one second and then the next moment it would be out of view either above the cockpit window, below the cockpit window, or on either side of the cockpit window. The medivac nurse flies up to every other night on medicvacs, and he has said that it’s never been that rough flying before. When we landed, the plane bounced several times and even went sideways. Both of us were trying not to throw up and still take care of the intubated patient. The pilots looked a little scared coming out of the plane and told us that they were relieved to be on the ground. I have since learned that if I die on a medicvac, the government would only pay out 300,000 dollars to SlantyWife. That sucks big time.