Goodbye Dutch, Hello Dutch

Well today we said goodbye to the first Dutch team we worked with and said hello to their replacements. I’m sure that they will have the same work ethic as the first team, hopefully they’ll be as nice and calm! That’s very important in stressful situations. It’s too bad that the first Dutch team is leaving, we were a well oiled machine when it came to getting through tons of cases, piece of cake. We have broken the record set in July for the numbers of cases completed since the inception of a medical facility in Kandahar. The previous record was set in July at 155 as of today, 28 August, we are at 176 cases. Again, not a record we wanted to break, but we blew it out of the water anyway!

There was a coordinated suicide vehicle bomber attack this week in Kandahar. There were 5 cars loaded with explosives that hit a Japanese construction company that employs Pakistani engineers. According to the Stars and Stripes article, the blast killed at least 41 people and injured 66. Fortunately we only received one patient from the blast, we were expecting a very large mass casualty.

So far I have scrubbed 107 hours of cases and our team has completed 271 cases since 16 MAY 09. I’m going to try to hit 200 hours of scrubbing by the time we leave here. I predicted that we would do 360 cases total, looks like we’ll also surpass that estimate!
Shayna is doing good still, getting ever closer to having the contraption on the right leg removed and very happy about that! Sorry I haven’t called as much Shayna, I’ve had some late nights the past couple of shifts. I can’t wait to be there relaxing on the couch with you!

Hours worked:
24 AUG 09: 10 HOURS
26 AUG 09: 16 HOURS
28 AUG 09: 12 HOURS (not a bad week as far as hours worked goes)

# & CAUSE OF SURGERY AS OF 28 SEP 09:
98 GSW
88 IED
6 SVBIED
5 SUICIDE BOMBER
7 ROCKET ATTACK
39 NBI
6 MINE
8 AIR STRIKE (SAME PATIENT 8 SURGERIES)
4 MVA

Sorry about not having any pictures this week, we’ve been pretty busy. I’ll take some and post a supplemental entry with nothing but pictures. I’ll have a lot of me just for you Shayna! I’ll try to keep them appropriate! Haha.

That’s about it for this week, it’s getting to be a little like Groundhog Day here! Shayna I love and miss you more every day and I’ll be there with you soon. Everyone else take care and keep in touch.

Dave