Irony of being in a war zone

Alright, so I've been a little bad about my postings. I've been meaning to write, especially about the way life is around here.

So supposedly we're in the middle of a war. Thank God I don't see the real action, but I have definitely seen some of the injured from the fighting of which I'd rather (and probably most of you would rather that I) not write about in detail. Nonetheless, I live in a 8 room ply-wood hut that has ducktape insulating the windows and where the walls do not extend to the ceiling between rooms (felted material, rather, keeps our privacy). This is not to complain, because as I've written before, I'm exceedingly grateful for my B-hut room. I wear my holster with a loaded gun around my waist to and from work, walking across large gravel stones that would give anyone tendonitis. You absolutely cannot avoid the dust- everything you own is covered in it, including the everything in the PX. I eat with plastic utensils on disposable cardboard-like trays everyday. Again, I point this out not to complain, but to show the irony that the other day, I walked down to one of the two beauty spa's we have here on base and got my hair highlighted and cut. Apparently at the other beauty salon you can get a massage as well. There are a dozen jewelry and rug shops near the PX and we have two gyms with good equipment and classes. There are poker nights and techno nights, salsa and taekwando classes. You'd have to wonder how we have time to fight a war.

Speaking of life on base, as far as laundry goes, you can take your laundry to a laundry service we have here with about a 3 day turn around time, however, I have heard on good authority that detergent is not used, but rather they use the sanitation cycle (i.e. incredibly hot water). We who work at the hospital are lucky enough to have 3 washers and 8 dryers at our disposal, but it can get very crowded and the wait time can get long. Just about 2 weeks ago, the laundry room was closed because some people weren't following rules. I ended up doing a bunch of my laundry by hand, as I like using soap. The laundry room, thankfully, was re-opened just a few days ago as I was getting to the very end of my clean clothes. If there is one domestic chore I really hate doing, it is laundry, however, I have never been happier to fold my clean dry clothes as I was the other day. Thank the Lord for washers and dryers. I miss my HE W/D that is in storage. So sad.

I usually like to include a patient story or two because often they can be rather humerous, however, I can't say that anything I've seen in the last few days has struck me as something to write about. Okay there was the guy who I saw twice in one day for a cut in his fingers. That morning he'd cut his thumb with his knife- bled pretty good, but it had stopped by the time I saw him and didn't need stitches. Later that afternoon he came back for a laceration on his index finger of the same hand for the same reason. Apparently he'd been using his knife as leverage attempting to pry something open. He was rather embarrassed and I joked about him being one of those cutters (depressive psych disorders) which he obviously wasn't but hadn't learned his lesson the first time. Oh and there was the interesting case of the guy who came in with a "corn" on the bottom of his foot which was wretchedly painful. I started cutting into it and discovered it was more of an epidermal inclusion cyst which our dermatologist finished excising as neither he (the dermatologist) nor I had ever seen one of these things on the foot. I thought the guy was going to cry when he could walk without pain after we were finished. Very satisfying.

Alright, I've babbled enough. If I actually write more frequently I won't forget what I want to write and it won't be as long.

I promise pictures soon. I just need to check OPSEC guidelines.