Swing of Things

Finally back into the swing of things back at work and home, feels good. The first pic is of me at work relaxing between cases, must have been on a Tuesday or Wednesday because that is the only days we have cases now due to the deployment of our General Surgeon. Not a bad deal for us, but it stinks for him! The sun is starting to come out again and we are hitting around 60 degrees during the day, no complaints here! I'm back to running a lot of miles each time and Shayna now has a personal trainer at the gym, so she is training me following her plan, I'm getting my butt kicked! The second pic is of Mohinder giving us the "mad face", I can't believe that Shayna and I are cat people, my Dad can't believe it either. Well it's a short entry, but it's an entry. I hope everyone is doing good, take care and keep in touch.
Dave

Aqua-flage

"Aqua-flage" is a termed that was coined somewhere on the East Coast, that's hilarious! Our XO just came back from CO training and brought the term with her, I think that it will catch like wildfire, at least I'm going to do my part to spread it around! The real term for the uniform is the "NWU" aka, Navy Working Uniform. I really like it, looks cool, but I don't know what we are being camouflaged to? I was talking with a Soldier and he said, "Yeah it looks cool, but when you fall into the water off the ship you'll be camouflaged to the ocean and not rescued!", he also said that the camouflage should have been a mix of international orange and bright yellow. Sometimes you need the observation from someone on the outside to try to make sense of things. Anyway, cool uniform and I like it.

I thought I was going to be selected for another deployment last week. Word came out that we are sending a group to Haiti for the humanitarian effort, including one OR Nurse. Well let's see, we have a total of four OR Nurses, one is already leaving for Kandahar, one is retiring in April, and one has a pregnant wife that will give birth the first week in February, it certainly didn't look good for the home team. I told Shayna what was happening and all she could say is, "Oh no!". They decided to deploy the expectant father, was it a good decision, probably not, but it saved me from deploying again for who knows how long.

Shayna is doing really good in her studies, she only has to take one more class after this semester and then the Master's Degree in HR is completed! She is focusing on either; 1. rejoining the Navy, or 2. joining up with the Public Health Service. If neither of the two work out then it's off to Cape Coral, FL to bask in the sun! The future looks really good right now for the both of us!

Well that's about it for this week, I'll post something else next weekend, hopefully something exciting! haha. Take care and keep in touch.

Dave

Moved again, home sweet home again!

Okay, it's the last move until 1 OCT 2011, I swear! Things are going great here, can't complain about anything. We moved into a nice house on base and I'm now 0.2 miles from work, it's a wonderful thing. I no longer have to stay in the hospital when on watch for cesarean sections, that's a good thing. If we hadn't moved on base I would've had to stay in the hospital every other day from April to November due to more personnel being deployed, not a good thing! Several people have been deployed in response to Haiti, they really need the help and we are sending a lot of top notch people, not me though, I believe I'm out of the deployment list for now. Shayna is doing fantastic in her studies, Masters in Human Resources, carrying a 3.8 gpa with 6 classes left! How did I find such a beautiful and smart wife? She is throwing around the ideas of either joining back with the Navy or going to the Public Health Service, either way I'm sure she'll do great. I'm back into the swing of things at work, we have a lot of new people that are working very well together, great team and that makes things go really smooth thus making work enjoyable. The other pics I posted are of Shayna relaxing after emptying around 50 boxes and one of Shayna with the acrobatic cat Mohinder, he's been a blast. Well that's about it for now, sorry about not uploading an entry last weekend, you can thank ATT for having lousy customer service! Take care.

Dave

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I am on duty right now, Wednesday through Sunday, so no alcohol for me this season. We went to bed around 10 PM last night since we weren't doing anything. I was paged into work at 1225 AM and stayed there until 3 AM, we delivered the baby new year for our area! Pretty exciting stuff. When the pager went off I was immediately back in Kandahar, we always had a pager with us and I was once again thinking, belly, chest, head, extremities, it was a strange feeling. I spoke with one of my friends from this last deployment and he is starting to suffer from PTSD, it's too bad, and he has it bad. I hope everything goes well for him, I'm going to keep in touch and put him in touch with other friends of mine who suffer from it as well. My friend and I were talking at work yesterday about PTSD and were wondering if anything is ever going to happen to us like that in the future. I sure hope not. Shayna is doing well, still 12 miles a week in the pool and is now going to start biking. Her sister and brother-in-law, Andrea and Scott, got her a Trek bike for Christmas last year and now she is ready for it. I can only imagine how many mile she will be doing on that each week. Work is going really well for me, there's nothing like coming from a pretty intense deployment into a controlled surgical environment, it's a beautiful thing! I'm also much calmer, many people have told me that, never thought that I wasn't calm in the past, but it's a good change anyway! As of today I can officially say that I am retiring from the Navy next year! woohoo! Heck of a feeling to say that, it's been a long, fantastic trip. Well I didn't have any pics for this week but will put some on next. Take care and keep on reading.
Dave