April Showers

(Notes to the troops)

The city of Khost sits on a kind of plateau surrounded by mountains. This forms what is known as the bowl. FOB Salerno is north of the city. Last night thunder clouds rolled into the bowl and gave somewhat of a fireworks show; lightening all around the bowl lighting up the sky. With it being so dark, it was quite the spectacle. Picture # 1 is the main hall of the hospital. My sister, Kim, works at my old elementary school. She helped a bunch of the students to write notes to the soldiers deployed over seas. We hung these notes up in this hall for all to read. It was nice to renew our perspective through the eyes of a child. Thanks Kim. Last week we spent several hours separating our living space into 6 separate hooches (Picture # 2). We first framed out the spaces with 2x4s, then created the walls with plywood. Eventually we will add doors.; for now, a shower curtain will do. It's not much, but even the little things help it fell more like home (Picture # 3).

(Privacy)

This week was much like the others. It went by extremely fast and was filled with taking care of trauma patients as well as performing elective surgery on local nationals. Most of the weeks seem to have somewhat of a theme, meaning, patients with the same injuries tend to arrive in clusters. This week the primary injury occurred to the upper extremities. Locals involved in IED blasts arrived with devastating injuries to their hands. Unfortunately, they required amputations of these traumatic wounds. One of the cases we performed this week was a thyroidectomy. I have blogged before about the iodine deficiency that the Afghan people have due to living in a land locked country. The patient this week had the largest thyroid I have ever seen (picture # 4). After a couple of hours it was history (picture # 5). Time continues to pass here and the middle of April approaches. That means I have just about a month and a half to go. Take care.