My mid-flight medical emergency

Someone shoved a red-hot soldering iron through the back of the right seat into my lower back! That’s what it felt like without question. I am flying my Maule M7-260 on straight floats at fifteen hundred feet, ironically, on an emergency evacuation from a cruise ship destination in the Bahamas.

I was fairly close at hand on a neighboring island so my arrival to the ship was swift which impressed the captain.

A personal telephone call from the Captain of a Holland America ship signified the importance of assistance urgently needed. A couple of passengers onboard had received a call that their daughter had been kidnapped back home in the US. They needed to catch a commercial flight from Nassau back home as soon as possible.

I was fairly close at hand on a neighboring island so my arrival was swift which impressed the captain. Two distraught souls were loaded on to the seaplane and taking off from the lagoon was always an easy runway. We were about half way back to Nassau when the kidney stone near crippled me in an instant! I grasped the yoke tightly and somehow managed to keep my utter distress from the passengers. This was no easy task as the husband was seated in the co-pilot position and the wife directly behind me.

There was no question what had hit me internally, that excruciating pain in the lower back to one side I had heard well described before. A marine VHF radio had been installed in my panel for communication with vessels and islands I was working with. A catamaran below me answered my urgent request for a phone call to a friend living near my ramp location on a lake in Nassau. I would be needing assistance with a taxi for my passengers to the international airport which was just minutes away and a ride to the hospital for one very distressed pilot.

ATC gave me a priority approach and landing in the lake. The cars were both there waiting when we docked. On final approach to the water another awful wave of pain ran through me making this landing a one-shot event in my mind. With thousands of hours on floats, my landings were most often perfection, for it had become an art form in my mind. This one certainly needed some polish with two minor skips above the water.

Maneuvering into the ramp is always a challenge but my friend, ready with a line, captured the forward cleat on the first try. The couple were helped off the seaplane and we wished them well in finding their daughter. While difficult to believe, I later received a call from Holland America praising my service, but informing me the passengers had refused to pay for their flight and the kidnapping turned out to be a hoax. Just another day in commercial float flying.

After the scoundrels had departed for the airport, I vomited in response to the intense pain. The hospital was over 30 minutes away, but oh, how wonderful the morphine felt prior to the operation. As I recovered, my much better half put me on the mat about not flying with a bottle of water in the aircraft noting that I could be considered the ‘preverbal camel’ and go all day flying without drinking.

I pled guilty as charged and changed my liquid consumption while out in the field and at home. So fellow pilots, take note and heed my lady’s fairly forceful insistence. My aviation doctor, for those interested, advised for the kidney stone prone lads and lasses out there that a 100mg of magnesium daily curtails calcium build up in some. I take it now and have never had one since.

I am back to flying, but taking 100mg of magnesium daily to prevent kidney stones.

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Paul Harding

Captain Paul Harding, originally from the UK, was brought to the Bahamas as a youngster after being educated in England. In 1989 he ordered a factory new straight-float seaplane from Maule Air in Georgia—not having a clue how to fly! He attended flight school at Rockledge Air Park on the east coast of Florida. He soled in nine hours and passed his PPL with just 40 hours. He then added a seaplane rating at Jack Brown's Seaplane Base in Winter Haven to complement his new seaplane with just less than 48 hours total time. Over the years he added all his commercial/instrument/multi ratings in land and sea. Paul formed the first commercial seaplane operation in the Bahamas in 1990, retiring after 17 years with nearly 14,000 hours experience. He published his autobiography, “Sharks in the Runway,” which is available on Amazon.

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