- On a serious, wartime note, I saw a patient the other day who was active duty, but in civilian clothes and beard because he worked with the local nationals, informants to be exact. Said his job wasn't that stressful, but recently one of his informants was captured and tortured by the Taliban by sticking a needle in the pad of his finger then ripping it out perpendicularly. It tore up his fingers pretty bad. Taliban thought he was only working with the Afghan national police. If they had known he'd be talking to us Americans, he would have been killed. Scary stuff. I think I'd be a bit more stressed. Even now, as vague as all that was, no names, places or dates, I wonder if the Taliban would scan blogs to find any information. Obviously OPSEC or operational security is big here.
- On a lighter note, another patient told me today the story of his son getting a tooth stuck in his ear. Instead of putting his first lost baby tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, the kid stuck it in his ear. THe parents had no idea, but it wasn't until two and a half years later when he'd been having balance issues and being generally clumsy that the kid was seen by a doctor and the tooth in the ear discovered.
- My last patient of the day today was so one flown in from another FOB with a splinter in her leg. Apparently she'd been sitting on an old wooden picnic table for a picture and just moved the wrong way. The splinter had been there and causing pain for about 5 days, but no one at the FOB wanted to go in to dig it out. You could feel, but not see the darn thing about 1.5 cm in length in her leg. A little lidocaine, a scapel, and about 20 frustrating minutes later I cut a nice little sliver of wood out of her leg. She wanted to save it so we stuck it in a lab tube for travel.
- And one last thing- last Sunday after church the guy sitting in front of me told me I had a beautiful voice. Now those who know me and have heard my singing KNOW the guy must be close to deaf. Dear, dear boy.
That's about all remotely interesting from here. I'll really have to start posting pictures soon.
I'm going to start checking Eva's ears more.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a lovely singing voice as well. And when you get back, would you check my ears? I think I may have a tooth in there. It would explain my years of clumsiness.
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