17 Oct 08

Friday, 17 Oct 08

Well here I am in Iraq.  I won’t bore anybody with travel plans or anything like that.  We are finally at our home for the next year. I think we got here Monday night/Tuesday morning, but I’m not sure.  The only reason I know todays date is because I have it on my watch.

Our DFAC here is pretty cool.  I think I like it the best so far because there aren’t really any lines.  They have 2 large dining areas and 2 small rooms with TVs and stuff… a “jazz lounge” and a “sports bar.”  They’re just decorated that way, nothing really fancy about them except they are SLIGHTLY more private.  It’s fun to just have something different.  Each of the big dining areas has a lot of different lines you can go through.  There’s several short order lines, several main lines, sandwich lines, wrap lines, hot sandwich lines, ice cream bar, dessert bar, bread bar, potato bar, salad bar.  And probably more that I’m leaving out.  So you don’t get totally bored with what you’re eating.  My favorite part about it is that it’s just across the street from my tent.  So easy.

For the most part we’ve been pretty bored.  The old unit here is training us and getting ready to go, so we’ve got twice as many people here as usual.  Until they leave I have an 8 hour evac shift.  If there’s patients that have to be moved anywhere, I help move them.  The first few days it was pretty slow.

Until yesterday.

I was about an hour into my shift when we heard “bang bang bang!” So we threw on our body armour real fast.  We thought we were mortared.  Turns out later it was rockets, not mortars.  The mortar came today, but it was a dud so nobody got hurt.  Anyways, moving on.  We had a few casualties come, and 3 of them were urgent.  It was confusing at first because with all the people here there were too many people giving orders, but after a few minutes we got an idea of who really knew what they were doing and everything worked out.  We needed to send 5 patients to Balad.  There was a lot of dirt in the air so visibility was really low, so nobody wanted to fly a bird in.  I ended up in the HAGA (medical MRAP which is SWEET) bagging one of the casualties.  We were going to go to Balad, but they told us on the way there that a bird was going to land at a COP that was on the way, so we were only driving about 30 minutes.  It was really awkward in the back because we were cramped already, and then we were wearing all our body armour.  I was bagging the guy on top, and I ended up sitting on litter handle for the guy on the bottom because there was nowhere else for me to sit.  We were driving pretty fast, and every bump and turn I went flying.  THere was lots of adrenaline, and it was exciting.  We got there, put the patients on the bird, and drove back.

For a lot of us, it was our first experience with real trauma.  We did have one fatality.  Some of the n00bs have had a hard time dealing with it.  All through training I wondered how I would feel and react to a situation like this, and I’m fine.  I didn’t interact with the patient that much, and by the time I saw him he was all bandaged up.  Overall it was a small incident, and I’m sure I’ll see much worse.  But I am optimistic about my ability to handle things in the future.  It was just draining.  I slept very well last night, and 5:00 came too soon.

Today we started the day by retrieving some dental and xray equipment from a conex.  We had to load these big heavy boxes into a truck whose bed I couldn’t look into without standing on my tip toes or jumping.  While lifting a particularly heavy box with several other people my squad leader told me to hold the front of the box, and while I was doing that the other lifters squished my head between the box and the truck.  My head is fine, but even 12 hours later my ear is red and swollen and tender.  After being attacked like we were yesterday, our guys like to send some deterents out…. They fire these big cannons (I don’t know what they’re called) at like 10 minute intervals.  They’re pretty loud when you’re on the other side of the FOB from them, but the yard with the conexes was right next to these big guns.  We could see the flash from the guns before we actually heard the bang and felt the shock wave.  It was pretty cool, but really loud.

Today we got hit with the dud mortar.  I was getting ready to go to my shift when someone went through the tent saying that we had to get 100% accountability.  We sat in our little building while the EOD guys detonated it.  Not to freak anybody out, but this is probably not going to be uncommon for the next few weeks.  They worst times for these things are at the beginning and end of a deployment, because they know we’re moving, and they know it’s more chaotic for us, so they try to take advantage of that.  I know I will be safe, even if the conditions here are not.  I know that this is where I am supposed to be.  I am just concerned with doing my job to the best of my ability and taking care of my battle buddies.  So nobody get an ulcer over worrying about me.  Just keep in touch

Speaking of keeping in touch, I got mail today!!  It was SOOOOOO exciting because I wasn’t expecting it.  So thank you Kim, Katherine, and Sis. Bobo!!  It’s great to get mail (whether snail mail or email) from people I’m close to, and expecially to hear from people I haven’t heard from in a while.  I have this blog where anybody can come and annonymously read about my life, and it’s really nice to hear from people who are keeping tabs on me.  Even just a comment on here lets me know you’re thinking about me, and it just makes my day.  I like to hear about all the mundane stuff too, because it reminds me that SOMEDAY I will get to have a normal life again!  So thanks everybody

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