I would like to say that there was some major, cool operation today but that just isn't the case. I wanted to write a brief blog today about the joy and appreciation of something different.
As stated before, everyday here at Shank is like Ground Hog's Day. The only thing that breaks up the monotony are traumas and for better or for worse, it has been real slow over the past few days. I expect that it will pick up again as the Talib's give one last push before the passes to Pakistan snow over.
The one project that I am working on right now is to set up a physician mentorship program with the local physicians. This area doesn't have a hospital per se, and doubt that there are any real surgeons running around. What we want to do is set it up so that local physicians can come to our hospital (aka Tent), bring their patients, and we teach them how to do minor surgical procedures. Procedures like: hernia repairs, mass excisions, and appendectomies. Once the surgery is done, we want to work with their nurses to improve post operative care and assisting them in taking care of their patients. What has happened in other areas, the local physicians get angry at the American doctors because they swoop in and start fixing all of the locals. Problem is, that leaves the Afghani physicians without any source of income. So the jist of our plan is to help support the local physicians with additional training and surgical support. We'll see how this turns out. I am pretty excited about it.
Back to the original discussion. Our FOB, for a long time has straddled the major highway that runs from southeastern Afghanistan-Pakistan border up to Kabul and to the north. Many of you in Houston would expect this to look like I-10, but you are incorrect. It looks much more like Welborn Road connecting Bryan College Station to Milican. Small, two lane road without a dividing stripe. (That is what I am showing in the one picture of the road.) In an effort to control this road, our FOB was built on two sides of the road. That started to cause some problems with movement back and forth between the sides of the FOB (East and West for lack of better terms.) So we built a bypass road around the FOB and in the last week connected the FOB, allowing free movement between the east and west sides. This was like going to Disneyland! They have a smoothie shop / barber shop where you can enjoy a nice cold smoothie and get your haircut by someone of uncertain gender attraction issues. (To put it nicely.) Today, we went over and I just got my peach smoothie and this Philippino guy (and I use that term loosely) started singing karaoke to some Michael Jackson song. He was just butchering it, so I was forced into going to the next room to get my haircut, just so I wouldn't start laughing out loud. I thought they only did that stuff in the movies!
There is such a thrill of just seeing something new, even if it is the exact same stuff you can see no further than 100 yards from my tent. I was pretty ticked off though when I walked through the Battalion Aid Station on the West side. This was an actual building with tile floors and two trauma bays. Currently occupied by soldiers sleeping. I couldn't help but sit there and think about the structure that we work in and the stuff we do, when from my perspective their sick call clinic looks like the Taj Ma Hall. (I posted a picture of our operating room. We operate on the stretcher that the patient comes in on, and yes, that is an air conditioning duct that runs right down the middle of the room right over the over table.)
The last picture is of me going out on a tour of a MRAP (Mine Resistant Vehicle). We drove all over the FOB and (staying inside the wire) went out where the FOB is nothing more than desert sand. The driver was concerned that he didn't have a mounted weapon on top. I told him not to sweat it because I had my M9 and 45 rounds of 9mm. That was a lot of fun. They are going to hook me up when they go to the range and let me fire some of the cool mounted weapons. (More pictures to follow!)
When I get home here in a few months, I better stay away from Walmart because I am going to want to touch everything in that store.
Doing things like physician mentorship isn't just good humanitarian work, it is counterinsurgency warfare at its finest. The enemy has all sorts of RPGs and mortars and rockets, but they have absolutely no ability to compete with the services you have to offer and the goodwill that has the potential to create.
ReplyDeleteI do have to admit that I LOL'd a little bit at what your driver must have thought when you proffered the use of your 9mm pistol to assuage his concerns about the lack of a crew-served machine gun.
Hang in there. We think about you all the time. And thanks for keeping us updated.