First Four Months of Military Service

It has been quite a while since my last post. A lot has been going on since I returned from Commissioned Officers Training.  I completed my first in-processing experience with the United States Air force at Lack land Air Force Base.  It was quite an experience.  Every person that is ever stationed on any military instillation has to go through this process.  It took about a month to complete and consists of attending meets, signing forms, tracking down signatures, talking to various departments to set up access.  As my first official experience outside of COT, in-processing put a bad taste in my mouth for the way things are run.  For as often as this process is completed you would think they would have it down.  That is not the case.  Evey time I would arrive some place new they acted like this was the first time they had every done anything like this.  There was A LOT of sitting around and waiting.  I was going through the process at the same time as one of my new commanding officers who is a Colonel and his experience was similar so it seems as though the process is just that way regardless of how long you have been in the military.  After completing my in-processing at Lackland AFB I was told that I needed to go over to Fort Sam Houston and in-process there as I would be posted at a hospital there.  So once I again I began a new scavenger hunt of searching out signatures and filling out forms and going through credentialing committees.  After all the paperwork was done and I was waiting for my credentials to be approved I began my orientation to SAMMC, San Antonio Military Medical Center.  This place is enormous.  It is a joint medical facility meaning that Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines all work together in the same facility.  Since it is on an Army base the mentality is more Army than anything else but there are some definite issues that come up having so many services with different ways of doing things all working together.  This Joint Military Force concept is relatively new and there are definitely some bugs that need to be worked out in the system. 



The facilities at SAMMC are all state of the art.  It has lots of things that I have never seen before or have just read about.  It is going to be a phenomenal place to learn.  This is a teaching hospital so there are lots of residents and students of all types around.  It is a Level I trauma center so we get civilian trauma patients too.  I am surprised at how sick the population that we serve is.  I have anesthetized very sick people which always makes it more scary.   




One of the cool things about this hospital is that it is where all of the soldiers come after they have been stabilized in Germany.  I have had the opportunity to work with many of these brave soldiers that have given everything for their country.  It is a pleasure to associate with them and to be a part of helping them recover.  There are a lot of these young men and women who have lost one or more limbs in IED explosions and fires.  Many of them have unbelievable attitudes and are great examples of courage and sacrifice.