After serving in the OR at Brooke Army Medical Center for more than a year and a half, I was restless. I had learned a great deal about my chosen field through working in a large, multi-campus teaching medical center. However, as a junior Captain I had little-to-no input into decision-making. When an opening in the OR at the Burn Unit came up, I volunteered for it. Since the Burn Unit was a very demanding assignment, both physically and psychologically, the preference was to staff it with volunteers.

We had just one operating room, with 2 nurses, of which I was the junior, and several OR technicians to assist. The other nurse, MAJ Carol Tyler, and I traded a week on and a week off of call, which was very intrusive on family life, but necessary. We also covered call for each other when we took leave. In addition to that, I volunteered for family assistance call, to help orient the families of new burn patients when they were brought in. That call duty came up one night every other week, on my non-OR call week. It was busy.

Unlike regular ORs, which are kept cold, the burn OR was kept warm, because the body can't regulate temperature and keep warm without skin. Both the ICU and the OR were kept at 80 degrees, minimum. The OR temperature was adjusted upward for younger patients, going above 90 degrees when the patient was a young child. Between exposure to blood/fluids and sweating, I had to change scrubs after every case. Our most common cases were debridement of burn wounds and temporary coverage with porcine or cadaver skin as a biological dressing, grafting burn wounds when they were ready, and amputations. We frequently had to amputate multiple limbs from the same patient, especially those with electrical burns. There was nothing sophisticated about it - it was basic and bloody. We also cleaned our own OR between cases, since we had no housekeeping support. Teamwork was essential.

The Burn Unit was part of Medical R&D Command, and was established in the 1950s to do research on burn care. At the time, it was the only burn unit of its kind in the world. A lot of cutting-edge breakthroughs in burn care came out of the unit through the 1950s and 1960s. By the time I got there, many other burn centers were providing care and research, some of them better-funded than we were. The Commander, who retired shortly after I left, was COL (Dr.) Basil Pruitt, a legend in burn care. Besides the clinical areas in the Main Hospital of BAMC, the unit also had a laboratory where experiments were conducted using animal subjects. We accepted both military and civilian patients, with military being the top priority. While I was there, we brought back and treated the Fuji Marines. Because our facilities were almost full (normally a census of 34), we had to borrow clinical space and staff from BAMC in order to treat that many patients, especially since so many (the Marines) were badly burned. Because of the specialized procedures we did, we could not get OR help from BAMC, so we worked longer and more frequent days/nights for the first couple of months after their arrival.

In April, 1980, we received commandos who were part of the aborted attempt to rescue the Embassy hostages from Iran (Operation Eagle Claw). An aircraft collision in the desert left 8 dead and others injured, including burns. President Jimmy Carter came to the Burn Unit to visit the commandos and also took time to greet staff members, including me. I was a little tentative sticking out my hand. First off, I wasn't a fan of the way he handled the whole hostage crisis, and secondly, the Secret Service agents looked as though they wanted to shoot someone. I remember the fuss over the fact that one of the commandos insisted on posting a Kennedy for President sticker on his bed. You take your humor where you can find it!