The Final Countdown

It is likely our last full week of clinical responsibility. Our replacements have nearly completed their pre-deployment training. One of the surgeons is blogging about his experiences. Much time is now devoted to wrapping up unfinished business, starting to pack, and planning the trip home. Still, until the next team actually arrives, we try to avoid attachment to any certain dates.

Newly snow capped mountains

Casualties have been light to non-existent. In the past two weeks, only one patient had minor injuries from a mortar round. Hopefully this bodes well for the spring and summer but skepticism about this abounds. We continue to treat injuries that result from the conduct of daily business. It is good to end the deployment without the casualties that had been so commonplace.

I sound like a broken record talking about the weather but we are drying out as the extensive rains continued last weekend. We tested the watertightness of the 'temporary' tents in which so many of the troops are housed. Some of them looked to be in danger of floating away until shovels and some frantic labor resulted in new drainage ditches. The OR in the FST had some flooding as well which was controlled by some determined effort by our teams. The hard structures here were built 30 years ago by the Soviets during their invasion and their age is really showing.

I have spent a lot of this forum poking fun at the FOB and deployment life but just to show that there is beauty everywhere, even austere environments, I am have included some pictures to prove my point.

Sunset