Just another day

The day was pretty much like any other since I have settled into my routine here. I had just finished a twelve hour shift, and even though I had only seen about twenty patients during that time period, I was exhausted. The chief complaints of back pain, knee pain and rashes which had all been present for the past sic months have a way of wearing on me after a while. I was tempted to, but did not ask, what exactly made it necessary to visit me today with these chronic complaints. Trying to keep my spirits up I told myself to try and focus on just treating the soldiers - understanding that somehow over here, away from family and friends, your notice the pain in your body a little more.




After dinner, I worked out at the gym, which I’m proud to say I’ve been doing religiously for six days a week since getting to Camp Cropper. The only problem with working out after a shift is that it makes it difficult to get to sleep, especially when I start to think about doing it all again at 7 the next morning. As I finally began to get my mind somewhere between being awake and being asleep I heard a loud alarm go off. At first, I thought my roommate had bought a new alarm clock and had set it wrong. After a few moments I realized that it was the siren sounding all over our base. It was perfect timing for a drill, especially since I was having trouble falling asleep and had to work the next morning.



When the siren sounds, the procedure is to but on your “battle rattle” and head to the rally point, which in my case is the hospital. The “battle rattle” is basically the Kevlar helmet and body armor. As we jumped into our gear and headed out of our room, the smell of fire wafted through the air. So maybe this isn’t a drill. It was then that I remembered what had transpired a day before. We had been taking care, almost daily, of a detainee with a horrible oral cancer that had grown so large in the back of his mouth that he could barely swallow or breath. He had had two surgeries to debulk the tumor, but there was no more to be done, as the cancer had now enveloped several large blood vessels in the back of his throat.



The detainees viewed our lack of additional care as negligent, and there had been rumors that when he died, they would riot. The view from outside our building confirmed their threats, as smoke billowed above the prison. All of a sudden our pace quickened and a bit of fear crept into our minds, this was no drill. All around soldiers were scurrying about, trying to get to their rally points as Humvees raced to block all the roads. Luckily, it is about a 4 minute walk to the hospital, and with the adrenaline running through our veins I think we made it there in 2, regardless of the thirty pounds of additional weight that the body armor provided.



Once in the ED, we prepared for a mass casualty event, not knowing what to expect. Everyone thought, and it turned out properly so, that the guards would try to subdue the detainees with tear gas and rubber bullets. There was no telling how many of the soldiers or detainees would be injured. We each took a bed in the ER, and we each had a couple of medics and a nurse with us. For the first half hour there was nothing. Then word came to expect anywhere from ten to two-hundred casualties, and I sarcastically thanked the informer for narrowing it down for us.



All told, the detainee uprising was quelled with very few people getting hurt, which is a tremendous feat when you think about it. Approximately five-thousand prisoners, the worst that Iraq has to offer, and our soldiers subdued them without a truly major injury occurring. So often we hear about the young men and women in uniform when they screw something up, so this is a nice forum to give them credit for performing with efficiency and respect on this particular occasion. All told, in the ER we repaired a couple of lacerations and one eye injury from flying rubber bullets, but the catastrophe that could have happened never transpired.



It was, however, a forceful reminder that the world that I am a part of over here is so much different from anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency here as you get into a routine, forgetting that there is very real danger around every corner. It’s a balancing act between paranoia and blissful ignorance, and so far I’ve been able to ground myself somewhere in the middle. But with the report yesterday that last night two men tried to kidnap a soldier on my base, we’ll see how long that will last.