Michelle Bowman, ARC/GNY Assistant Director of Training and Logistics, writes about her historic trip to Israel to work as an MDA Ambulance Responder.

I started my second week of work expecting to see some action. After three days of ambulance work my most exciting call had been an elderly man with a bloody nose, so I hoped things would get a bit more exciting. Instead, I was introduced to the phenomenon of the transfer.

On Sunday I started out with a couple of normal calls, but nothing unusual. Then, when we were waiting after dropping off a patient at Hadassah Ein Karem (one of the two primary hospitals in Jerusalem), my driver announced that the government was going to pay for us to transfer a patient to another hospital—in Haifa. Located on the northern Mediterranean coast, Haifa is about 2 ½ hours away from Jerusalem. Was he serious?

He was. We went upstairs and picked up a man with a long cast on his leg. The patient was completely coherent and (apart from his broken leg) seemed to be in excellent health. However, I don't speak Hebrew and I rarely know exactly what is happening; maybe he had some horrible medical condition that needed special treatment in Haifa.

Therefore, we all climbed into the ambulance for the long drive. I took the patient"s pulse, and then there was not much to do for the next two hours and 25 minutes except enjoy the scenery. The other volunteers started talking with the patient, and eventually one translated for me. It turns out that the patient had been the commander of a brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces, and his leg was broken when someone threw a brick at him during the evacuation in Armona the previous week.

The most interesting moment of the trip came as we entered the outskirts of Haifa. Throughout the trip the patient had made several cell phone calls, but only once did we pull over on the side of the road so that he could talk. The other volunteer (my personal translator) informed me that the patient was going to do a radio interview, live from the back of the ambulance. We listened to the radio as he explained his experiences to the people of Haifa, getting somewhat of a hero’s welcome.

We dropped the patient off at his house and set out for home. On the way, my driver was nice enough to stop for food (this doesn’t always happen, which makes for a long day) and a walk along the beautiful Mediterranean coast. We didn’t get back to MDA Jerusalem until 5:30pm, but overall I had enjoyed the unusual experience. My driver said that this was the first time in his five years working at MDA that he had had such a long transfer, so I did not expect another similar experience.

Once again, I was wrong. The next day I set out with an entirely different driver, again expecting a much more average day. We had two calls, including one that involved carrying a very heavy woman down three flights of stairs in a chair. Then, my driver announced that we were going to transfer a patient from a hospital in Jerusalem to another hospital in Tel Aviv. Unbelievable. This was a short trip, only about an hour. We were back by 3pm, but we did not get any more calls that day.

I am quickly learning that there is no such thing as a typical day at MDA. None of the other Red Cross volunteers have transferred a patient outside of Jerusalem, so I just happened to have had two extraordinary experiences. I enjoyed the transfers, but I miss the action. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

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