Student meets the Master

Some of the new US OR team showed up this week to start training to take over the hospital from the Canadians in mid-OCT. It's a good group that are young but really chomping at the bit to begin, those of you who know me well know that I'm throwing my hands up in the air and telling them to run with it! haha. They will undoubtedly be able to handle anything that is thrown at them. The person who is going to be the head of the OR is LCDR Keith Ferguson. He happens to be the reason that I now work as an OR nurse! He talked me in to coming with him in 2004 in Jacksonville, FL to check out the OR to see if I liked it, obviously I did. It was definitely a surprise to see him here after 5 years of being apart. Welcome Keith and you’ll do a fantastic job. The first picture posted is of me and Keith. The second picture is of me eating a "healthy" dinner after 11 hours in the OR!

The Canadians have done a fantastic job running the OR and the transition is going as smooth as silk. Everyone has been very professional and keeping away from the “us vs. them” environment. As I’ve said in the past, I’ve never had the opportunity to work with so many people from so many different countries and it has been a great experience, I recommend it. You realize that everyone is basically the same, and the similarity to yourself is astounding. I hear “We are the World” playing in the background! Haha.

Shayna is doing great, only one month to go with the external fixator on the left leg, piece of cake! She sure is ready to have it removed and start some rehabilitation. She said that her calves look like sticks from not being worked out! She has a 97% average in both of her Master’s classes, proud of you hun keep it up. Once she is an officer in the Army or the Air Force it’s going to be strange being the military spouse for once, I don’t know if I’ll go to the wives club meetings or not!

It has been an eerily slow week this week. I guess it’s because Ramadan has ended and everyone celebrates for 3 days of eating and relaxing. It certainly is appreciated here! It also has been a very sad week starting Monday with 4 guys that came in, one passing away. I was scrubbed in to the case when he passed and it hit pretty hard. The last time I cried was when Shayna and I exchanged vows, and I almost did again during the case, very, very bad day. It’s okay now though.

Hours worked:
21 SEP 09: 12 Hours
23 SEP 09: 8 Hours of training, no cases! What the….?
25 SEP 09: 14.5 Hours

# CAUSES OF SURGERY AS OF 25 SEP 09
105 GSW
113 IED
7 SVBIED
13 SUICIDE BOMBER
10 ROCKET ATTACK
41 NBI
6 MINE
9 AIR STRIKE (SAME PATIENT 9 SURGERIES)
5 MVA

That’s it for this week. Shayna I love and miss you, and I’m sorry if I upset you buying the SUV, but I really think that you’ll love it! Everyone else take care and keep in touch.

Dave

3 Paydays to go!!!!

Only 3 paydays to go and then I get to see my honey! Woohoo! As in the previous deployments this is the time when you realize just how long you have been gone (since 28 MAR 09), it’s something how fast time flies by. I wouldn’t say that it’s flying by because we are having fun although the Canadian, Danish and Dutch teams have been fun and fantastic, I’d say it’s just because we have been very, very busy. Our monthly case load has been dwindling down as far as cases go, and that’s a good thing. The new people are starting to trickle in and before we know it the old codgers (us!) will be put aside so the young bucks (the new US, Canadian and Danish team) can take over. That will not be a bad day!

I've posted pictures of the Qatar trip, again! Haven't really taken any new ones here yet. I did work on a team picture for the OR, but am having trouble getting it to open. As soon as I get it finished correctly I'll post it here, it's pretty funny.

Out of the last 33 months of knowing Shayna, I will have been deployed 15 of them. Now that she is going to join the Air Force or the Army as an officer, I’m sure we’ll be apart for a couple more deployments (up to 2 years!). We were talking the other night and we both said that it’s strange how we just take it as a part of our lives, where many people you see on Survivor are crying because they have been separated from their loved ones for only 39 days! Granted it helps a lot having access to forms of communication (phone calls, internet, letters etc.), but just think what it was like for the military personnel just a mere 20 years ago, no communication for up to 4 months! Those were the days of the strong men and women of the military!

Hours worked:
13 SEP 09: 16 Hours
15 SEP 09: 17 Hours
17 SEP 09: 13 Hours
19 SEP 09: 13 Hours

# CAUSES OF SURGERY AS OF 19 SEP 09
104 GSW
109 IED
7 SVBIED
13 SUICIDE BOMBER
10 ROCKET ATTACK
41 NBI
6 MINE
9 AIR STRIKE (SAME PATIENT 9 SURGERIES)
4 MVA

That’s about it for this week in beautiful Kandahar! Shayna I love and miss you more than you can imagine, everyone else take care and I’ll be seeing you soon!
Dave

14 Hours of Blood Soaked Shoes

I had a wonderful welcome back, 14 hours of surgeries and blood soaked OR shoes. Woohoo! I scrubbed a 6 hour vascular repair case wearing a x-ray protection vest the whole time, it looked like I just completed a marathon after the case was over, sweat soaked everything. Maybe that’s why I’ve lost so much weight! Speaking of weight, I averaged a weight of 144.2 pounds for August with an average run length of 3.37 miles at a pace of 8:35 per mile. I’m a number freak, what can I say!

The pics this week are of me in the Arabian Gulf enjoying the sun. The salt content of the water is very high, actually burned the eyes when water went in them. The water was also very warm, almost hot! Aaron was standing by me and he said that he found a cool spot, I told him that’s the spot I just peed in and that my pee was cooler than the water! Just kidding! Haha. The second pic is of Shayna with her external fixators on, she sure is happy to have the right one off. She says that the left one is a little slimmer which makes her happy. She should be starting to work out again soon, that will make her feel great since she is a workout freak of nature! She’s going to try swimming to see how that works out, she already has started the abdominal and upper body exercises, way to go gorgeous, I’m proud of you!

It was a long trip back to Kandahar from Qatar. We had to check the flight manifest on the night of the 7th at 2100 hours to see when we were scheduled to leave the following day. We all hoped that it would be a nice, leisurely afternoon flight, yeah right. The flight time had us show at 0230 in the morning of the 8th, and we finally arrived back at Kandahar at 1700 or so that afternoon, long flight but uneventful which is a good thing. The last leg of the flight we had a Stryker vehicle and a MRAP in the plane with us, two very large, very armored and very heavy vehicles, it was concerning upon take off and landing. I kept thinking of the scene from Saving Private Ryan when the pilot was saying that his aircraft crashed because someone armored it without telling him!

The last couple days of the trip were spent at the pool, gym and a couple meals at Chili’s. It was only 4 days off, but what a fantastic break it was. When we arrived back in Kandahar we heard that some General in his infinite wisdom has cancelled all the R&R breaks for all US personnel in Afghanistan until further notice. I guess that he is going by the old adage, “Beatings will continue until morale improves!“. I’m sure that there is a good reason for his decision, but it escapes me right now! The toll it has taken on the young Sailors that were gearing up to leave is enormous. They have worked their butts off at a high tempo, extremely emotional job and this feels like a punishment to them. If anyone of any importance in the military is reading this, please re-instate the R&R policy in Afghanistan, it is a serious mistake getting rid of such a small but helpful time off to recharge.

September 11th, the reason why were here. It was a quiet day, we were wondering if the pace would pick up a bit due to the importance of the day. We had a flag raising ceremony, which I was unable to attend due to being in the OR. I wonder how many 9/11’s will be remembered by US personnel in Afghanistan in the future?

Hours worked:
9 SEP 09: 14 Hours
11 SEP 09: 12 Hours

# CAUSES OF SURGERY AS OF 12 SEP 09
100 GSW
98 IED
7 SVBIED
12 SUICIDE BOMBER
8 ROCKET ATTACK
40 NBI
6 MINE
9 AIR STRIKE (SAME PATIENT 9 SURGERIES)
4 MVA

Well that’s about it for this week. Only around 7-8 more entries and then I’ll be writing from home sitting in a pair of shorts on our couch, woohoo! Shayna I love and miss you very, very much. Everyone else take care and we’ll be seeing you soon.

Dave

Rocket Attack!

I'll start this entry with a pretty funny story that was told to me by our ortho surgeon Sonya. She said that the other day the fire alarm went off in the chow hall, which is a common occurrence and everyone usually just looks around to make sure we don’t have to evacuate the building. Well this particular day I assume the building was full of new arrivals to the area, the alarm went off and she said that about 70% of the personnel hit the floor and climbed under the tables thinking that it was the rocket attack alarm! She said what was funny about the whole situation was when a guy with a strong southern accent said, “Hey dumb_ss_’s, that’s the fire alarm” and everyone slowly got back to their seats, a little embarrassed! I don’t know if that’s funny to any of you, but I think that it’s hilarious.

Pictured is me driving the ball at Doha Resort Golf Course, and the second one is of me on a C-17 Aircraft in darkened out conditions on our way to Qatar for R&R.

It’s official, we destroyed the record of 155 set in July. We completed 201 surgeries in August, busiest month ever! The new Dutch team said that now we need to break another record, the least amount of cases completed in a month, and we all agree. Haha.

I’m writing this from the R&R in Qatar. I’ll first apologize to those reading this in Bastion and other places that aren’t able to leave due to op tempo and staffing issues. Sorry guys, I’ll drink a beer for you! Haha. It’s now day 3 in Qatar and so far it’s been fantastic! Day 0 we hung out, drank a couple of beers and rested. Day 1 we worked out, ran and then went on the inland sea beach picnic. The trip to the small resort was a blast. We loaded into 3 SUV’s and hit some huge sand dunes after letting some air out of the tires. So now that I know what a Chevy SUV is capable of, can I borrow your SUV for a while when I’m home to visit mom? Haha! After the roller coaster ride through the dunes we swam in the Arabian Gulf and had a bbq complete with some local foods, hummus and other things that I didn‘t want to know what it was. Day 2, today, Aaron, John and I went golfing at the Doha Golf Resort with the Chaplain who is stationed here, absolutely beautiful (not the Chaplain, the course!). I haven’t golfed in 2 years but still shot a 56 in 9 holes, when I usually averaged 100 - 105 on 18 holes, kinda rusty! Tonight the group is going to a local mall for 5 hours to shop, that is the equal to a trip to hell for me so I’m going to pass on that trip and just do laundry and relax. Tomorrow I’m going to workout, run and hit the pool for some sun, hopefully I’ll be able to hold the tan for you Shayna until November! Haha.

Shayna is doing great after getting her external fixator off of the right leg. She should be back in Wisconsin today after spending a couple of days with her friend Irene in Manhattan. Thanks again Irene for opening your door to my hunny and being such a great host. Her next surgery, to remove the left fixator, will be in mid-October, then done with that mess! I know that she is looking forward to that day, as I am for her. Hang in there gorgeous almost done!

Hours worked:

29 AUG 09: 3 Hours (called in for two mass casualties)
30 AUG 09: 16.5 Hours
1 SEP 09: 9 Hours
3 SEP - 8 SEP in Qatar for R&R, woohoo!

# CAUSES OF SURGERY AS OF 1 SEP 09

100 GSW
94 IED
7 SVBIED
9 SUICIDE BOMBER
8 ROCKET ATTACK
39 NBI
6 MINE
8 AIR STRIKE (SAME PATIENT 8 SURGERIES)
4 MVA

Well that’s about it for this week, it’s been a great break but I’m looking forward to getting back to the grind and excitement of Kandahar. Shayna I love and miss you very much, everyone else take care and keep in touch.

Dave

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

Resources

I was in the chow hall today and I overheard a conversation between an Army Captain and several enlisted guys. The Captain said that he was finding it really hard to tell his people that they should re-enlist in the Army. Basically because of the stories that I heard from the enlisted guys. One of them has been in the Army for 5 years, 3 years of it has been spent on deployment! That’s outrageous! He stated that it was really hard for him to have a meaningful relationship with anyone since he’s gone all of the time. He also said that he is nearing the end of his enlistment and that even if the Army gave him a gold plated Mercedes he was still going to get out, a few choice cuss words were used! Even though the Canadians do a poor job in utilizing the people with certain skill sets (not the people in this hospital it comes from higher up and yes I’m still pissed about Ron leaving for Kuwait!) they do take care of their deployed personnel. During a 6-7 month deployment they get to go on a paid vacation for 3 weeks to a destination of their choosing, and a replacement is sent out to cover their shifts while they are gone. What a deal! Some went to Greece, Italy, Spain, and Bolivia. Could the US Military do something similar with their troops, probably not due to the massive amounts of people deployed all over, and our Armed Services spread so thin around the globe, thank you Mr. Clinton! But I’ll tell you one thing, the morale and retention of the troops both would definitely increase. The Army is giving us 4 days of R&R to go to Qatar, which is a good deal and I think that you get a couple of weeks off to go home if you are deployed for a year. I think that they really need to re-evaluate that program and come up with a better plan to take care of their people, but who am I, I just count things in an OR for a living! Haha. Don’t get me wrong, the Navy has treated me very well over the last 19 years and I am very grateful for all the opportunities that my service as afforded me. I would still encourage all young people to do at least one tour in the branch of service of their choosing, it is a great experience and it instills a feeling of accomplishment and pride.

I wanted to give a shout out to the SUPPORT THE TROOPS OF HARTFORD, WI, HARTFORD VFW #8834, AMERICAN LEGION POST #19, PACK & SHIP OF HARTFORD, WI, SUPPORT THE TROOPS FRIENDS AND FAMILIES, ST. GABRIEL’S CHURCH RICHFIELD, WI, NORTHLAND MARKETING AND STARBUCKS IN WEST BEND, WI. Thank you all very much for the box that you sent out to me. It pretty much contained everything that I needed. Fantastic! I think that you are doing a great service to your country by doing this, and it is much appreciated. Thank you all again!

Pictured is me, Parris, Linda and Martyn sporting our t-shirts that were sent out to us from the Inter-National Hero to Hero.US campaign and the Red Deer Fire Fighters Association. Thank you to both organizations for the gifts! You are awesome!

Also pictured is Ron in his last Kandahar picture! You can tell by the picture how much stuff is floating around in the air, and who knows what we are inhaling into our lungs! woohoo. We’ll see you in a couple of months Ron, take care and we miss you already buddy, tell John I said hello.

Shayna is doing great with the legs. She has been dedicated to beating the odds and not getting a pin site infection, and is winning the battle. September 3rd is the magical day of getting the first external fixation device removed, and she is ready for that! The left leg fixation gets removed somewhere around mid-October. It’s neat that we are both going through a trying time for the past 7 months or so, me with the deployment and Shayna with the surgeries and we are both going to be ecstatic when this time is over. Shayna I love you and am very proud to call you my wife!

CASES:
I’m going to stop listing the cases and instead have a running total of types of causes and hours spent at the hospital per day. I’ve spoken with several people and they said that they generally skip over the case listings stating that it is a boring entry. I’m going to still keep a tally of surgeries completed and the country of origin of each patient if anyone is interested in seeing that, just ask me when I come to visit. Here we go:

15 AUG: 1 hour (we were called in to assist the Canadian team with several patients at one time)
16 AUG: 10 hours
18 AUG: 17 hours
20 AUG: 14 hours
22 AUG: 7 hours, huh? Woohoo!


# CAUSES OF INJURIES AS OF 22 AUG 09
91 GSW (GUNSHOT WOUND)
84 IED (IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE)
38 NBI (NON-BATTLE INJURY)
6 MINE
5 SVBIED (SUICIDE VEHICLE BOMBER)
5 SUICIDE BOMBER
6 ROCKET ATTACK
7 AIR STRIKE
2 MVA (MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENT)

If anyone is interested in having me return to having the surgeries listed please leave me a message and I’ll be happy to list them once again.

Shayna once again I love and miss you very much, can’t wait to see you. Everyone else take care and keep in touch.

Dave

Well....

Well we’re at that stage of the deployment where we’ve seen just about all there is to see in trauma. Been there done that, got the blood on the shoes! Now that I’ve said that we’ll probably get something really freaky in! haha. We are on track to destroy the July record that we set, hopefully we don’t break it, we don’t want to see people get hurt. We had a conversation with a father of one of our child patients (pictured), through the interpreter. He lost 3 sons and a daughter and is at the hospital with his remaining son. The conversation left me with a warm feeling, he said that he now sees that the coalition forces are here to help and not hurt the people of Afghanistan. We have done multiple surgeries on his son who has lost his left arm and had some chest injuries that have since healed. You could tell by just the body language the tremendous loss that the father has suffered and how much he loves his remaining child. It’s really sad to see the suffering that the Taliban has brought to this region. Hopefully this push will eliminate all Taliban presence in the area, hell hopefully all the Taliban everywhere will be gone by the time we leave!
Shayna is doing great after her second surgery and has completed the last adjustments on her external fixator on her left leg. She had x-rays done on her right leg and if all is well she’ll be having that removed by the end of this month. Can’t wait to see those legs! Haha.
We have 5 paydays to go. Time has really flown by and hopefully it will continue to. In a couple of weeks I’m going to go to Qatar to enjoy some time off, looking forward to that. They have a lot of trips that you can take but all I’m really interested in is not carrying my weapon, getting some golf in, and laying by the pool! I should have plenty of pictures to post after that trip, probably one of me breaking a club in half after another great shot into the sand, water or woods!
CASES:
10 AUG: 1. Face washout, tracheotomy. 2. Washout right buttock. 3. Washout right buttock, wound vac placement. 4. Wisdom teeth extraction. 5. Removal of hardware right ankle.
11 AUG: 1. Craniotomy.
12 AUG: 1. Open reduction internal fixation zygo and orbital fractures. 2. Abdominal abscess drainage. 3. Removal of wound vac and closure of wound. 4. Dressing change on 30% burn patient. 5. Washout of left arm amputation, wound vac placement, closure of chest wound. 6. Washout right arm, wound vac placement. 7. Craniotomy.
14 AUG: 1. Left arm amputation washout and closure. 2. Exploratory lap, I&d. 3. Removal of IO needle from chest. 4. Trache. 5. Exploratory lap. 6. Left lower extremity external fixation and fasciotomy. 7. Washout right arm, amputation of thumb, closure of head wound. 8. Closure of bilateral calc fractures, left lower extremity external fixation. 9. Washout left foot.
Shayna I love and miss you very much, hang in there it’s almost over for both of us! Everyone else take care and keep in touch.
Dave