Busy Week

Well soon we will be saying goodbye to our Danish friends. It’s going to be a sad day, we’ve all become good friends. I guess everyone is used to saying goodbye to friends, that is the life of a military person unfortunately. It’s really not “goodbye” it’s always “see you later”, goodbye is final and that’s not good, especially here! Last week was really busy, 2 eighteen hour days and a fourteen hour day, this week we‘ve had a couple of 12 hour days, not as bad as last week. Wednesday was a very sad day, two children came in after experiencing an IED blast that tore through a bus. Their mother and father were killed in the incident, and one of the kids ended up passing away due to injuries from the blast, that left the one child all by himself. Not a good day for anyone at the hospital. It’s sad that the cowards use such a crude weapon to fight their fights, they are very unpredictable.

I’m doing good overall, but when you see kids die it really takes a toll on your psyche. They are truly the innocents in this whole war. It’s too bad.

The picture on this entry is the empty blood units we used on one patient. Believe it or not he survived and is doing well! I couldn’t believe it.

CASES:

22 JUN: 1. Neck washout and closure, left shoulder and leg washout, wound vac placement left leg. 2. Abdominal washout, wound vac placement. 3. Washout right hip. 4. Bilateral knee disarticulations (amputations). 5. External fixation left femur.
23 JUN: 1. Team DANUS was called in to help with a massive casualty, basically another amputation, I was only there an hour, don’t know how many limbs were amputated, very sad day.
24 JUN: 1. Wisdom teeth extraction. 2. Abdominal washout, wound vac placement. 3. Tracheostomy.
26 JUN: 1. Colectomy, wound vac placement. 2. Closure of scalp laceration with skull fracture, done on a “detainee”, we saw 3 “detainees today that blew themselves up with an IED, I guess you would call that self imposed justice! Woohoo! 4. Thoracotomy and closure, placement of chest tube. I held the lung in my hand on this one, pretty exciting stuff don’t you think? Haha.

Well that’s about it for this week, Shayna I love and miss you very much, everyone else take care.
Dave