Coffee and chatting with French UAV friends. Above me, Jordanna and Lt Bouret (commented on in my last blog entry).
Okay, so hands down, the most exciting thing this week was getting attacked during the wee hours of the morning. I won't go into details, but I will say it was a little scary at the time. Nonetheless, I was pretty safe at the hospital. Fortunately and surprisingly there were not that many US casualties. I'm now working on the inpatient ward for the last 5 weeks of my tour here, so I'm getting to see the traumas again. The worst we had was an amputated foot. It was a rough day, however, as far as morale goes. A lot of people were scared and we were all locked down in the hospital - no one coming or going, no planes coming or going. Miraculously our wonderful nutritionist got us food for breakfast (pancakes!) and we dealt with MRE's at lunch and dinner. We were allowed to leave late that night but obviously security was still extremely tight. Now that that is over though, things are pretty much back to normal operations and it is currently a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
Okay, so hands down, the most exciting thing this week was getting attacked during the wee hours of the morning. I won't go into details, but I will say it was a little scary at the time. Nonetheless, I was pretty safe at the hospital. Fortunately and surprisingly there were not that many US casualties. I'm now working on the inpatient ward for the last 5 weeks of my tour here, so I'm getting to see the traumas again. The worst we had was an amputated foot. It was a rough day, however, as far as morale goes. A lot of people were scared and we were all locked down in the hospital - no one coming or going, no planes coming or going. Miraculously our wonderful nutritionist got us food for breakfast (pancakes!) and we dealt with MRE's at lunch and dinner. We were allowed to leave late that night but obviously security was still extremely tight. Now that that is over though, things are pretty much back to normal operations and it is currently a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
Now that I'm on the inpatient side of things, I get to see a few more interesting cases. Yes, of course there are still the heart attack rule outs and the occasional pneumonia and cellulitis, but often the trauma stories are interesting. There was recently a pack of 5 soldiers who came in pretty beat up after their MRAP ran over an IED. They spent all their time in the ICU before they were shipped off to Germany, but the one kid I got with a rather minor (compared to some) facial lacerations and tooth loss had an interesting story. I kept hearing bits and pieces, but once he was rather awake after his sedation from surgery, he drew me a picture of the events and did the best he could to describe the incident without his 5 upper front teeth and the fattest upper lip I've seen. Apparently this kid was in a tower and saw a jingle truck (Afghan decorated truck) come racing toward one of the gates that doesn't usually get trucks. He shot at it and it exploded sending shrapnel into his tower and thus injuring his face, however, he continued to shoot at some of the insurgents who were behind some barriers and shooting at him and some soldiers on the ground. He said he thinks he took down three before his back up got to him. I'm pretty sure this kid saved a couple lives if not many. Good kid too. I'm not sure he realized what he did.
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