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Pitt State bond provides strength while at war
What are they doing?
Commanders Angela Gardner and Sandra Heaven have been serving as nurses with the Second Supply Battalion at TQ Surgical (the largest Level 2 medical facility in the Al Anbar province) in Al Taqaddum, Iraq, since August 1.
Gardner and Heaven are part of a group providing medical care for the 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), which is composed of several thousand military personnel in four battalions and three companies. Because the Marines do not have medical care of their own, the U.S. Navy provides care for them.
Al Taqaddum is located in the Al Anbar province, which sits between Ramadi and Fallujah. The province is approximately the size of North Carolina and has a population of 1.2 million people.
Although medical corpmen are stationed with units on the ground, they are mainly responsible for making sure injured personnel are safely transported to a Level 2 facility. There, the injured are taken treated and/or transported to a Level 3 facility, depending on their injuries.
Although the medical center does treat injured Iraqi civilians, a spokesman with the U.S. Navy says the Iraqi medical system has been improving. Treating civilians, he says, is now less of a “standard feature.”
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When Angela Gardner enlisted in the United States Navy the day after finishing her nursing degree at Pittsburg State University in 1991, she didn’t foresee that 16 years later she’d be treating patients in a war zone on the other side of the world.
With all the elements in place to bring on a severe case of depression – the beginning of the holiday season, her two young children at home with her husband in the States, and her round-the-clock, on-call status attending to the serious injuries of both military personnel and Iraqis – Gardner could understandably feel a bit lonely and removed from life at home.
But when she learned that a military friend who shares her roots at Pitt State would be serving alongside her, the adjustment was much easier.
“It’s very rare to meet someone from Kansas, let alone someone who went to the same university as you,” said Gardner, a flight nurse from Westphalia, Kan., who has been serving since August with fellow alumnae Sandra Heaven (BSN ’89) in Al Taqaddum, Iraq.
“It just came up in our day-to-day discussions, and we learned we had some of the same instructors. We still talk about Drs. Mary Carol Pomatto and Ruthellyn Hinton. We actually have one Jayhawker over here with us too, but we told him he’s excluded from our group,” she said with a laugh. “You come together and rely on each other a lot because you can’t go home to your family.”
Gardner and Heaven first met a few years ago at their home base of Camp Lejeune, N.C. Heaven, a nurse and supervisor of the operating room at the medical base just west of Baghdad, says being on the same tour as Gardner has given her a sense of home overseas.
“It’s good to have someone over here you can tell your stories to and you can talk about things back at home with,” said Heaven, who originally hails from Lenapah, Okla. With adult children in the Carolinas and in Oklahoma, she has had an easier time being away than Gardner, whose husband (an active duty Marine) is home with the children, ages 4 and 7. “For me,” says Heaven, “your family is the family you’re with all the time.”
As proud as she is to serve her country and take part in this “fulfilling experience,” Gardner admits to some homesickness, especially this time of year. “It’s very difficult to not be around them. It just breaks my heart and I hoping they’re small enough they won’t be able to remember much of it,” she said, adding that she gets by on daily phone calls to her husband. “But as hard as it is, it’s our responsibility to be available for this work. Freedom isn’t free for anyone. For Sandra and me, we’re just really proud of where we came from and what we’re doing now.”
Until the pair comes back home – they don’t have a return date yet but are hoping for sometime in the spring – these nurses say the common bond they share through PSU is helping to keep their hearts and minds grounded.
“We are proud to tell people where we’re from, and to make sure they know Pittsburg is in Kansas, not Pennsylvania,” Heaven said. Gardner agrees: “My goal is to get back to Kansas.”
---Pitt State---
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