Seeing as I work this Sunday, I had Friday afternoon off which I spent with my Jewish, Army, Yoga, newly-promoted-to-Captain buddy Jordanna. Jordanna works in supplies and basically gets the infantry guys what they need. She also works we the coalition forces to get them what they need as well. In other words, she has connections. Friday afternoon we used one of her connections to spend some time in part of the French area on base, right on the flightline. This French unit was working missions with unmanned aircraft for reconnaissence. It was a beautiful day and we arrived walking onto their shaded little deck outside their office with helicopters flying overhead. We walked into their breakroom to be greeted with a bunch of French soliders yelling at the TV screen as they were playing some version of MarioKart on the Wii. We then enjoyed a cup of good strong French cafe with Jordanna's Lt contact and met his boss, Maj C. This was followed by a lovely tour of the control room for these unmanned aircraft. Everything I saw in that room was complete OPSEC, but very cool stuff to say the least. We chatted a bit more while we waited for one of the planes to land and I got to show off the little French that I remember. We got a picture in front of the tiny little plane once it landed which I'll have to post once we get a copy of it from Jordanna's friend. Needless to say, it was a nice day.
Bringing the conversation back to work, I've been trying to help this young infantry soldier with severe back pain. This kid is tight as a drum and almost got killed on his last tour when he was thrown out of the turret (the gunner position) of an MRAP 3 years ago. Not to mention he's about as type A as one can get which contributes, in my opinion, greatly to his back pain. I've tried everything up my sleeve for back pain. His been adjusted with OMT. He wears a portable TENS unit he got from PT. He stretches daily. And when I saw him on Thursday he was taking Seroquel 100mg and Valium 10mg at night to sleep which barely gets him 3-5hrs of sleep. He takes a valium in the morning,Mobic (an anti-inflammatory), Baclofen 3 times daily, plus about 12 percocet (narcotic pain med)/day. His pain, however, was doing pretty good on this. He's absolutely desperate to get extended to February so he can take the sniper position that just opened up. He's a good kid and I just discovered he's from Kentucky. I'm sure we probably have one friend, family or acquaintance in common. He works hard and was raised pretty much by his grandmother because is mother is an alcoholic and crack addict. So Friday he comes in again all distressed (which is normal) and tells me he just threw out all his percocet and Valium (which I had just refilled the day prior) because he just found out his grandmother died and he wants to get off all the narcs and sedatives so he can do his missions as he has nothing to got back to. With extreme discreteness, I've had him see a psychologist a couple times in the outpatient clinic (as opposed to the psych clinic which has a stigma attached to it). I simply don't know what else to do with him. He's suppose to have gone on a 9hr mission today and I can almost guarantee I'll see him in clinic tomorrow. All I can do is pray that he does the right thing and doesn't get hurt.
I've already nearly written a book for this post so I'll have to save the next two for the next post, but I wanted to mention that I got to shake the hand of Afghan President Hamid Karzai last weekend. I have footage of his speech to us, but it is too large of a file to get it uploaded. I also have great footage of all the outpatient clinic providers sing Karoke to the Jackson Five's "ABC, 123" in payment for losing against our techs in a game a Cranium. It wasn't pretty, but very funny. Again a bit long to upload, but I'll see if I can't clip it and give you all a taste of it.
Off to bed.
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