Vegas Flight

Yesterday we received a call to go and pick up a patient at Santa Monica airport. He was being flown in from Las Vegas and was going to UCLA medical center to get his aorta repaired. He had a thoracic aortic aneurysm. In plain English, the largest artery in his body, the aorta, was ballooning up and getting ready to pop just as it left his heart. As you can imagine this would have bad consequences. We were told to be at the airport at 09:45 to meet the airplane. We arrived in Santa Monica around an hour early and were lucky that we did. Just after we got in the area dispatch was informed that the people in Vegas forgot that there was a time change and informed him that the plane was on final approach. We quickly made our way out on the tarmac and searched for our plane. Once we found it we very gently loaded our patient up and made a quick escape to the hospital. Patients like this guy make me very nervous. He also had the same thing happen to his aorta a few years ago only that time it was farther away from the heart. He is one very lucky guy but I don't envy the bill he is going to get for the transport from his hometown outside of Las Vegas to UCLA.