Adapt or Die

While I was at Bagram Air Base waiting, and waiting (did I mention that I waited) to get our here to Shank I noticed the moto of the 30th Medical Task Force was "Adapt or Die". At first passing I was not awe struck nor particularly moved by this motto. It was accompanied with a cobra twisted menacingly around a sword. Oooooh, scary a bunch of doctors.

Now that I have been out at my FOB for a couple of days now, I am learning to really appreciate that motto. There is so very much that you have to adapt to around here that you find yourself constantly having to make adjustments. Simple things like, going to the bathroom before you go to bed so you don't walk into the barbed wire surrounding the women's shower. Other more complex things are having to adapt to new surgical teams, ATLS teams and integrating yourself into the machinery without breaking it.

You have to adapt to the dust, the heat and the arid climate. Adapting to a crummy mattress (I have fashioned a pillow top mattress with my sleeping bags and an egg crate pad!) We are going to have to adapt to having four men living in cramped spaces with little privacy. Adapting to the time when I can call home and find my family awake and getting to talk with them (turns out to be around 5AM).

Seeing all of the people already here gives me great hope that I can make the changes necessary to "Adapt or Die".

The one thing that I found very refreshing was to be able to partake of the sacrament today. There were only three of us there, but to have something so familiar and base to draw upon was very comforting and refreshing.