Juice me up

  • Published
  • By Col. "Tip" Stinnette
  • 39th Air Base Wing commander
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Sparky was a 28-year-old, brand-spanking-new paramedic student. On his first day in the medic lab, he marked the occasion by taking the defibrillator paddles, placing them on his chest and shouting, "juice me up!" His fellow paramedic student took him at his word, charged up the paddles and shocked Sparky with 360 joules.

Sparky took all of six steps before collapsing in full cardiac arrest. His fellow classmates practiced CPR until the real paramedics arrived three minutes later. The paramedics defibrillated Sparky again, at 360 joules, returning him to a normal sinus rhythm, saving his life. Sparky is a volunteer firefighter with aspirations of being hired as an EMT. In true EMT spirit, he was given the new nicknames: AC/DC and Joules.

Sparky broke two golden rules: if you don't know what it is, don't touch it, and if you know what it is, don't kill anyone with it. The student who charged the defibrillator had to stay after class and write "I will not electrocute my classmates" 100 times on the board.
This publication marks the last issue of the Tip of the Sword and welcomes two new community information publications to Incirlik, Incirlik Now and Incirlik Express.

The new publications will juice up the flow of information and news here at Incirlik. The good news is we know what it is and neither publication will kill you. Incirlik Now provides the defibrillator equivalent of 360 joules to our community news. It is an on-line publication that provides near real-time information with full public access. This means your friends and family in the States can access the site and see what is going on in your life at Incirlik. Incirlik Now is also fully synchronized and captures key Air Force-wide news along with senior leader messages. The transition to this format merely keeps pace with the CNNs of the world by putting current Incirlik news at your finger ips on-demand.

Incirlik Express, the second leg of the new information offering, will be a printed weekly newsletter. The purpose of Incirlik Express is to serve those of us who just want to read the highlights on the run. Incirlik Express will also be a four-page table of contents for Incirlik Now. This two leg approach to getting you timely information recognizes and leverages the power of the internet and the value of your time by defibrillating and juicing up the old Tip of the Sword.

We are absolutely convinced you will be pleased with our new approach and we will be coming to you in the near future to see how we can fine-tune our information offerings. Our Public Affairs team is on the cutting edge and really excited about their new information tools. You can be confident that there are no Sparky's on the Incirlik Public Affairs staff ... they know exactly what they are doing, which is communicating the message of heroes ensuring freedom's future.