After you sign on the dotted line to join the military, you are basically property of the U.S. government. "They" can do anything with you. This past week one of our medics was taken from our clinic and moved to the base gate to be a military cop. She now carries a gun and is tasked with protecting our base. The increased threat level necessitated more security. In 2010, I was astounded to fine out that the group practice manager (basically a medical office manager in uniform) from our clinic in Charleston was deployed to a very dangerous base deep in Afghanistan. Why? The military found out that she speaks Polish. A polish interpreter was needed there, so there she went. I could go on and on with stories like this. It was in Afghanistan that I learned how to deal with these surprises and challenges. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right?
Nothing could have fully prepared me for my deployment to the hospital at Bagram Air Field. I arrived on Christmas Eve 2009 and finally departed on June 28, 2010. It was the most intense 6 months of my life. There were many other medical people there working at the hospital that felt the exact same way. There was a never ending supply of wounded coming through our doors. The hospital would fill up, a plane would take a load of patients to Germany, and then the hospital would just fill up again. The work pace was insane! We were treating the worst trauma patients imaginable. The medics were giving high powered drugs in the helicopters to keep the patients alive. The nurses were working cycles of three days on and one day off, which is about twice as many hours as they normally worked back home. The radiologists worked 12 hour shifts every day for six months in a row because there was only 2 of them. The surgical subspecialists like our neurosurgeon were on call every minute of their entire deployment. The head trauma surgeon was responsible for the entire hospital 24 hours a day for six months. We worked hours like this because there was no other choice.
For me, it was a daily grind. Each day I had to see all my patients by 0630 in the morning. I learned quickly to review the daily labs while downing a large cup of coffee, so that I could be functional upon arriving on the hospital ward. By 0730 I would have already seen 5-10 complicated patients and given updates on them to the entire medical staff. It was challenging to say the least. This made my residency training look like a walk in the park. 3 of us doctors covered a 28 bed hospital ward 24/7. We all worked about 75 hours a week on average with no days off. This process went on and on through January, February, March, etc. It seemed like it would never end. I leaned on my good friend Dr. Mike Greene quite a bit. He kept me going when I was about to lose it, and I tried to do the same for him. I started blogging about my experiences shortly after arrival at Bagram. It was like therapy for me. It was totally necessary for me to process an intense experience and move on as soon as possible. There was surely another difficult situation right around the corner.
I worked every day for 5 months without a day off. That is not healthy! That is not how it is supposed to be! Oh well, that was the way it had to be. I remember constantly telling myself to step up to the plate each day. The wounded needed us to be ready at all times to give them the best medical care possible. It did not matter if it was 4 in the morning or 4 in the afternoon. The stakes were high. My Uncle Dennis, a Vietnam veteran, told me that "the troops need you". Those words echoed in my ears on many tough days. I just kept reminding myself that one day this would all end. And, I prayed A LOT! I needed strength from God. All those prayers from home definitely helped. Thank you!!! We all needed each other to make it through because we were experiencing something out of realm of normal human experience. The injuries were just so severe.
There are times in life when you simply have to put everything aside and do the job. At Bagram, we all had to focus on our job no matter what. It is amazing what we can do when we set our minds to it. "Service Before Self" is an Air Force core value. That was never more evident to me than at the hospital on Bagram Air Field. We were all asked to go above and beyond what we thought was possible. We all had to dig a little deeper until we could say that the mission was accomplished.
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