Doctor loans skills to Guard

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Dr. Janice Weixelman has become an icon in Red Feather Lakes and Wellington, where she established community medical clinics in 2003. Miramont Family Medicine now owns the clinics, but Weixelman still treats patients at both locations.

That is, she treats them when she's not parachuting out of airplanes or learning how to avoid capture by an enemy.

Weixelman, 50, is finishing her training as a flight surgeon for the Air Force Air National Guard. For the past three months she has been learning specialized skills for overseas deployment, such as how to transport the ill and injured by air or sea. Her unit will likely be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan late in 2010.

For now, though, she will enjoy a few months back with her patients. She will return to Colorado on Dec. 10 after completing her training at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Wash.

The past three months have been Weixelman's longest stint with the Air National Guard since she enlisted in 2006. Before that, her maximum duty was two weeks at a time. After this training, however, instead of being listed as a "doctor" with the Guard she will be a full-fledged flight surgeon.

The new role is less glamorous than it sounds, Weixelman said with a chuckle. It's the military term for a doctor who treats personnel on military aircraft and ships. Her current training will make her a "world-wide deployable" flight surgeon, and to do that work she must be prepared to parachute out of a crashing plane, survive in water or a remote area after landing, avoid capture in unfriendly territory and survive as a captive if necessary.

The Air National Guard can be called upon for both civilian and military situations. Around the world, teams help with tornado damage, tsunamis, war injuries or improving sanitation in third-world countries. In cases of natural disaster, a Guard team goes into the area prior to other troops to check out available potable water and shelter and come up with a plan for keeping the troops healthy.

Part of Weixelman's training has involved treating patients in unusual situations. For instance, when a wounded soldier must be airlifted out of an area, the change in air pressure affects a wound "just like a bag of potato chips that's taken from Fort Collins to Red Feather," she said. Doctors must close the wound loosely, to allow room for expansion of gases until the patient reaches the hospital.

Weixelman will not treat only military personnel, however. Whether she is sent to a war zone or the site of a natural disaster, she will also treat injured civilians.

In fact, Weixelman said, civilian casualties are "the most tragic thing" she sees. In any military engagement, she pointed out, the number of civilian injuries far outnumbers those of military personnel. "People are horribly disfigured," she said, and may be blinded or missing limbs. It's heart-wrenching to see parents looking for lost children. It's even worse when parents of children being treated are never found.

After Weixelman finished her residency, she went to work for a doctor in Cheyenne, who inspired her to join the Air National Guard. He had served as a flight surgeon for 27 years with the Cheyenne medical unit, which undertakes humanitarian missions around the world.

"He knew I liked adventure and humanitarian missions," Weixelman explained.

In 2008, Weixelman was able to participate in a humanitarian mission in Guatemala with the Guard. "We treated about 6,400 patients in nine days," she said.

Besides providing medical, dental and optometry care, the team taught residents techniques for healthier living, including basic first aid and CPR.

Weixelman is fortunate that her current boss, Dr. John Bender of Miramont Family Medicine, is supportive of her military obligations. In fact, Bender himself was a flight surgeon with the Navy Reserves and Army Reserves for 13 years, serving part of that time in Kosovo.

"We're doing our darndest" to keep the Red Feather and Wellington clinics staffed in Weixelman's absence, Bender said. Currently, physician's assistant Amber Buhl is working full-time in Wellington, and PA Kara Bradley works at all three Miramont clinics, including Red Feather.

Bender is recruiting a second full-time physician for the Wellington clinic, which will have new digs by the end of 2010. He is looking forward to Weixelman's return to the clinics after her deployment next year.