The Lighter Side of Life

A beautiful Bagram morning.  I saw this sunrise on the way in to work and I just had to get on the roof and take a picture.

Purple mountains majesty.

I want to dedicate this update to the lighter side of things.  I feel like I have spent too much time on negative things and I want to make sure that I give just as much time to the funny things that happen on a daily basis. 

     Let me start with the snake story.  On Dec 5^th an unfortunate soldier who had not headed the frequent warnings to keep food out of your sleeping quarters woke up to find a very large snake slithering across his chest.  We were told that he kept his cool and waited for it to slither onto the floor before getting out of bed and contacting ‘vector control’.  I am pretty sure that is the story he told but I would be interested to talk to his roommates and hear about how it really went down.  A base wide email was sent out recounting his horrifying tale to help others realize that the warnings are for good reason.  Their email included pictures which I am including on the blog.  You may recall while traveling to Afghanistan I stopped at Manas Air Base in Kirgizstan.  We have received word from people stationed there that they have had an infestation of mice.  People describe feeling those nasty mattresses that they have there move underneath them with mice wriggling in the stuffing.   I have not run across any wildlife in all my travels yet and I hope to keep it that way. 

I am not sure what kind of snake this is but I wouldn't want to wake up looking into his beady eyes.  This is the picture that came with the email.

     It is not unusual for us to see the same patient a few times as they are brought back for follow up surgery.  I had one such experience the other day when 9 year old boy who had been hit in the eye with a rock came back for suture removal.  Upon seeing him again I was reminded of our first encounter and I wanted to tell the story.  When he first arrived he was super scared and upset.  His identical twin had thrown a rock and hit him in the eye rupturing his eyeball.  It was an emergency procedure and needed to happen quickly.  Through the translator I told the patient and his father about my twins that were ten years old.  This common ground lightened the mood considerably.  I told the boy that my only job was to keep him safe and comfortable.  I walked him through what would happen.  I told him that we would wheel his bed into the operating room and that we would put our monitoring equipment on him.  I showed him the mask I would use to give him some smelly gas.  I asked him if he had ever wanted to fly.  He looked at me incredulously and then said yes.  I told him that this gas would make him feel like he could fly.  I said that we would even put a seat belt across his hips to keep him from flying around the room.  His expression changed and he got a big smile on his face.  He looked at his dad and said ,”Can I go?”  His dad smiled and gave him permission.  I explained that the only thing he needed to do was to take big deep breaths and he would start to feel buzzing all over and then he would feel light as a feather.   Once we got into the room he moved over to the OR table and let us hook up our monitors.  Everything at this point had to be mimed.  I showed him the machine and the seat belt.  He lay down and I put the mask over his face.  He had a huge grin on his face as he started taking enormous breaths of the gas, in this case sevoflurane.  His good eye started to roll back into his head but the smile never wavered.  Just before succumbing to the anesthetic effects of the gas the little boy raised his arms up in perfect imitation of superman.  Mission accomplished!  The next time I saw him he was excited to go to sleep again.

Don't play with guns!  This is me with my Beretta M9 and a laryngoscope used to intubate people.  

     So speaking of funny patient experiences, I have to set the stage for this next story.  You probably know about the extreme views on modesty that the local culture has for women.  Most women cover most of their skin and some are completely covered with a lace veil covering their face.  We tell people that we will uncover their heads when we get back to the operating room.  Different people handle this in different ways.  I had one lady who howled and beat her chest when she saw her sister coming back to the recovery room without her head scarf.  Anyway, on this particular day I was assigned to the neuro room and we were doing a spinal fusion on one of the only very obese Afghan women I have ever seen.  Everything went fine with the surgery.  She was nice and comfortable when she woke up.  She was so comfortable in fact that she started doing the crocodile death roll in the bed trying to find the ideal position.  I had to disconnect her IV to keep her from wrapping herself up in it and pulling it out.  She fell asleep, or at least stopped moving around until we were right in front of the recovery room where a few very old Afghan men were seated waiting for other patients.  At that moment my patient got the rolling bug again and started to spin.  The blankets covering her no longer covered her and exposed her to the wide world.  We grabbed the covers and put them over her but she promptly ripped them off and threw them away leaving her entirely naked.  I cannot adequately describe the look on these old men’s faces.  It was a mixture of amusement and horror but they all got up and left the area. 

     Last story for the day is not funny but holiday-esque.  It is true that here in Afghanistan we miss out on all of the fights that ensue on Black Friday and the holiday spirit of cutting someone off for a parking spot but we have horrible lines at the post office.  I sent two packages out for Christmas.  The first I sent at a ‘postal rodeo’ where the post office came to the hospital.  I waited in line 2 and a half hours to get it on its way.  The second package a sent just yesterday and waited in line for three hours.  Why so long?  Anything sent out of the base has to be inspected.  People send huge black trunks home all the time and these are opened and each item thoroughly inspected.  There is no incentive to be productive or pleasant and so it takes forever for one item to be inspected.  You have to stand back behind a line while your stuff is pulled out and then crammed back into the box.  Yesterday the kid that inspected my item spilled a bottle of water all over my box.  Nice!  So if you get something from me know that I must love you a lot because this is what we have to go through not just at Christmas but always.

This is the box I was shipping at the postal rodeo.  2.5 hours worth of waiting.

I got to know these guys really well since we spent three hours in line together.  This is once we got into the post office.  You can see the postal worker on the left searching through a gorilla box.  The lady looking through the box left for her lunch break right when it was my turn.  A young kid showed up about 15 minutes later and ended up spilling all over my stuff.   

     Have a fabulous week. Love you.

Brett

Brian and I borrowed this M4 so that he could take pictures for his Christmas card.  Our guns aren't nearly as impressive looking.   Be sure to notice my crooked captain's bars on my hat.  Quality sewing!