By Gwen Strough
May 08, 2008 07:21 am
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Reflecting on the past 16 years, Leesa Lowder said it was amazing how the pieces of life’s puzzle sometimes come together.
“Mom always told me things happen for a reason,” she said.
When Lowder graduated from Pendleton Heights in 1992, she wasn’t sure where her life was headed. Now, she said, she’s exactly where she wants to be and doing exactly what she wants to do.
Lowder works as a nurse in the surgical intensive care unit at the VA Medical Center in Indianapolis. In addition to that full-time job, she regularly exchanges her hospital uniform for a green flight suit, which is the standard dress code for her other occupation as a U.S. Air Force flight nurse.
“Looking back over time, I realize I was meant to do this,” she said, as she began describing the twists and turns that brought her to where she is. She wanted to go to college, but finances weren’t available. Her dad encouraged her to explore the military as an option.
Lowder ended up talking with an Air Force recruiter, who arranged for her to take a battery of aptitude tests. Her scores indicated she was a good candidate for technical school. She signed up for four years and was assigned to imagery intelligence, a component of general military intelligence. The job entailed reading aerial footage taken from various aircraft platforms.
Lowder’s first assignment was just prior to the Haiti crisis of 1992-93. She was chosen to go to Guantanamo Bay and was there when Jimmy Carter flew in for peace talks. “That’s when I realized the significance of the job I was doing,” she said.
Her next assignment took her to Panama, where she helped provide intelligence used by the Drug Enforcement Agency for counter-narcotics operations. From there, she had a rotation to Saudi Arabia in 1995.
With only about a year remaining on her four-year stint, she wasn’t sure what direction to go. She again spoke with a recruiter, who made her aware that she could become a Reservist if she committed to another three years, so she did. Stationed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Atlanta, Ga., Lowder trained as a command post aircraft controller. She loved it and was the honor grad of her class.
She still needed money for college, so she went to a temp agency. “The person who interviewed me was an Air Force captain who saw a young kid needing a break in the world,” Lowder said. They offered her a position recruiting plasma donors for a medical company.
“That fueled my fire for getting into something medical,” she said. “It opened my eyes to how blood banks touch so many lives. I don’t think people realize how precious that gift of life is,” she said.
Lowder enrolled into night classes at Georgia State University, and found work on fishing boats in Alaska to earn money during the next two fishing seasons. But, she yearned for her home in Indiana.
She said it was divine intervention that caused the next sequence of events.
A young man who walked into her mother’s workplace noticed Lowder’s Air Force photo on the wall and began asking questions. As it turned out, his father was the chief in charge of safety at Indiana’s Grissom Air Reserve Base. He was looking for a safety technician.
A phone interview led to a job offer which opened the way for Lowder to return to Indiana. “I knew if I was ever going to make something happen, this was it,” said Lowder, who by then was a staff sergeant.
“The chief was key in getting my college education. He helped me find ways to coordinate my schedule so I could work a part-time job and go to school. He planted a seed in my mind that I should continue with my career and become an officer. At that point, I didn’t think I had what it takes to be an officer, and I had no aspirations. He made me really think about it.”
She enrolled at IUPUI and was accepted into the School of Nursing. She graduated in May 2003 and took a job at the VA Hospital in Indianapolis.
Along the way, she realized she wanted to be a flight nurse. She completed the indoctrination process, flight school, survival training, and learned how to perform nursing care on an aircraft.
In April 2005, Lowder’s mother was in the final stages of a long battle with ovarian cancer, but remained determined to be at her daughter’s flight school graduation.
“That has got to be one of the most amazing moments of my life,” Lowder said. “She was tied to lines and tubes and had to carry 10-pound bags of nutrition that flowed into her veins. Bu, she got on a plane, flew to San Antonio and walked up on the tail of a C130 and pinned my wings on me.”
Today, her mother’s support and encouragement inspire Lowder in her work at the VA Hospital in Indianapolis, where she cares for patients from 19 years to 98 years old. Many are veterans from World War II and the Vietnam War. The aging population has need for open heart and vascular surgeries, aneurysm repairs, cancer intervention and even Agent Orange-related ailments, she said. Soldiers arriving from the current conflict in Iraq have generally been stabilized in the theater, treated and/or surgically repaired in Germany and then transported to Indy for rehabilitation.
In her job, she has opportunity for conversation with veterans, particularly from the Army and Marines.
“It is a way I can place myself on their level,” she said. “The moment I tell a vet that I’m in the military, and that I’m a military flight nurse, his whole demeanor changes. It becomes a kinship that puts patients at ease. We have something to talk about. For a little while, they are able to forget about the surgical pain and think about other things.”
In her job as an Air Force Reservist, when Lowder changes into her flight suit, she shifts gears in order to incorporate all the considerations that affect a patient’s well-being while in the air. Flight nurses are highly trained and have the combined skills of an intensive care nurse, emergency nurse and critical care nurse as they deal with a large variety of emergencies and under numerous conditions.
“There are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines stationed at every corner of the earth,” she said. “If they are injured so badly that they can’t be rehabilitated where they are, they are placed on an air evacuation mission which transports them to a location where they can receive proper care.”
In the tight space of the cargo area of the aircraft, a flight nurse must keep patients stable during transport, which is sometimes turbulent. Ceiling lights are placed every four to six feet above their work area. When they are flying downrange, blackout periods are sometimes necessary in order to remain undetected by anti-aircraft artillery. Assessing a patient under those circumstances becomes quite a bit more difficult, Lowder said.
A year from now, if the Iraq conflict is still ongoing, Lowder will be deployed to help transport the injured from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. She currently flies regular training missions at Wright Patterson Air Force Base to carry out mock scenarios aimed at keeping flight crews sharp. “You train as if it is a real mission, so you’ll do well when you’re put to the test,” she said.
“Working at the V.A. in Indianapolis has really opened my eyes. When I talk to the people, I get a real appreciation for what they have gone through during their service to our country,” Lowder said. “I feel like I wouldn’t be here without them. They’ve paved the way for my life.”
She said the comment she hears most from soldiers who have been injured in Iraq is, “I can’t wait to get back.”
“They feel like they are on a mission, and they want to return to complete the assignment,” she stated.
Lowder said the soldiers who are fighting in Iraq believe in what they’re doing, and she hears very little negative feedback. She said she is honored to care for them in their need. Now, she’s found direction in her life.
“I think I’ll retire from the VA, I love it that much,” she said. “It’s a great place to work. There are great things taking place there every minute of every day.”
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