HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year to all! I wish all of you a wonderful 2012. We had our own New Years Eve Party here in Kandahar, which has been going on since last night and is continuing today, over 8 hours later until it is also New Years in the US. Celebration here is just like back home- complete with party hats, balloons, horns, food, and yes, champagne and beer and food. Well, ALMOST champagne and ALMOST beer:). As you can see, I am celebrating New Years 2012 with the 3 food groups: Champagne (sparkling wine), Coffee, and TAB, of course! I wish I was up in Greer skiing with Benjamin and my nephews Colin and Cameron. I also had to add the picture of the Boardwalk here. It was during a sandstorm and I thought it looked like snow so I figured I would put it in.

Happy New Year and Godbless to all back home who have loved ones over here and all over the world defending our freedoms. You all have the truly tough jobs and we salute you!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from NATO Role 3 ER Kandahar, Afghanistan!

THANKS FOR ALL THE PACKAGES AND CARDS!

To all- thanks to all my friends and family for sending all the packages, cards, gifts, snacks, "stuff," well wishes, and prayers my way. It is really uplifting to us when we come to work to look at the mail call and see that you have something waiting for you pick up. I really do appreciate it very much, as do all service members who are deployed during the holidays away from family and friends. It has especially ramped up, obviously, during the Christmas season.

Throughout the month of December, coming in for a call day is almost like waking up Christmas morning and coming down the stairs to see what Santa has left you. One day was especially "bountiful," as you can see from the picture. My trauma team had to take a cart out to the mail tent to get all of our boxes, packages, cards, and letters! Like Christmas morning, we open up the packages together and see what everyone has gotten. It truly is a lot of fun. Some of the things we hoard for ourselves, but much gets shared among the team and the rest of the ER (especially the food :)! Now, I will have to admit, some of the stuff we get is a little "different." Not sure what I am supposed to do with the chicken-loofah thing but it did make an interesting hat. My corpsman Will enjoyed being Rudolf for the day with the blinking nose and Santa antlers he received!

Again, my heartfelt thanks for remembering me and my fellow service members during this holiday season so far away from home!

GROUNDHOG DAY

Man, as I was walking to the hospital for morning report today, I realized just how Bill Murray felt. So much for the excitement with the USO tour a few days ago. After being here for almost 2 months, my days off are definitely starting to feel that way! Many of you have been asking what I do on my days off. Well, I have no days "off," as I am always on call for mass casualties, but at least on my days where I am not in the ER for 24 hours straight. Here's a glimpse at my groundhog day schedule: 0500- alarm goes off. Work out until 0645. Shower and get to hospital by 0730. Check email, get coffee, and eat breakfast (one hard boiled egg). Got to morning report and rounds. Have a cup of Chai Latte in the ER and chat with current team for a few minutes. Return to barracks. Work out until 1300. Go to DFAC (Dining Facility) for lunch (turkey, tomato, and provolone sandwich without the bread- I know.... weird:). Back to barracks. Read. Nap. Get up and go to dinner. Go to spin class or movie night. Go to bed... Alarm goes off.......

Thank God for the call days and the Stars and Stripes newspaper (see headline) to break it up! I did, however, catch a couple of interesting headlines on our newspaper's front page (The Stars and Stripes, which we get 1-2 days late on a regular basis, so we are a little "behind the times."). Mr. Walter Pincus must have graduated from ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism to come up with THAT headline. I mean really! Titles should give you actual insight to the article, not mislead you. (OK, since you can't see the article, it was about cuts to the program aimed at curbing casualties from the IED's. Duh. But I still think the headline was funny). However, Mr. Leo Shane III gets the award for most entertaining headline in one of last week's papers! (Actually, I decided not to include that one in my blog, but feel free to email me if you are curious what it said..........;)

HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY DAD!

USO Stars in the ER

I got to meet Jordin Sparks and Robert Horry. They were on a USO tour that came through Kandahar. Jordin Sparks was very nice and I got my picture taken with her. We talked about the "west side" of Phoenix, and I told her I still live in Phoenix, work at Thunderbird, and was born at Maryvale. A family friend was her dad's high school football coach in Phoenix. She gave me grief about my UofA scrubs (thanks Amy, I wear them every day on call!). Jordin even sang for us and told us about her new movie coming out in August. It is a remake of 1976's "Sparkle" that she stars in with Whitney Houston. I told Robert Horry I was from Phoenix. He was not impressed;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENJAMIN!

Working Out

I took my workout addiction to a new maniacal high today- 8 hours, capped off with 2000 meters on the row machine followed by a grueling two hour spin class! I was feeling pretty impressed with myself during the spin class, until I looked up and the guy in front of me had a t-shirt that said "2010 Jalloween Javelina Jundred (mile) Race" from Aravaipa, AZ. Wow, now THAT is a workout! I am beat, though. 3 hours of spin (two sessions), 90 minutes of running, 60 minutes of elliptical, 60 minutes of P90x, 30 minutes of lifting, 20 minutes of rowing, 10 minutes of abs, and 30 minutes walking to and from the hospital completed my workout. It began at 0500, and finished at 2000 (8pm). It was broken up with a couple of hours at work, including an hour of teaching, a movie, and some time on the computer. I am lookking forward to my 24 hour shift in the ER tomorrow, as I get a day off of working out. I don't think I will repeat this day very often, especially when I return home:)

TRAINING

During our downtime, we are expected to “train.” This can take many forms. One day, the Veterinarian came in and gave us a talk about taking care of the canines. I did not realize how many canines (not “dogs”) were in theater, and how many military vets there are to take care of them. There are hundreds of canines in Afghanistan, and they are increasing it all the time. To take care of them, they have a whole cadre of vets and vet techs. They are all Army, but they serve all the forces. I figured they would just be stationed in the big military bases, but the vets are spread throughout the theater, including many FOB’s (Forward Operating Bases- much smaller than where I am at, by a magnitude of a hundredfold). At our base, we have a few vets, including the one pictured talking to us. They have their own clinic behind our hospital, and their own OR. For some cases, they will actually bring the canines in to our OR’s to operate, including taking care of gunshot wounds to the canines. They even brought a canine in under anesthesia to use our MRI which revealed a slipped disk in it’s back! Hilarious!

We also do regular training. We had a couple of Army medics up with us from a nearby FOB, who were training with us. Here I was giving a talk and demonstration of putting a breathing tube in a patient, using a scope that has a small video camera built in to make it easier to make sure the tube goes in the right place. Training keeps everyone sharp, and is a nice break from taking care of the wounded soldiers and civilians that we see. It fits in well with what I do back home perfectly, and hopefully will make a difference in taking care of our warriors when they do come in.