Where have I been??

OK, so my blog has had more missing dates than George Bush's National Guard record.... I'm sorry. At least I was actually in uniform at the time. I will now attempt to do penance by filling in the gaps.

As most of you probably know, it has been quite a time these last few months. I can not tell all in one posting, so over the next few days I will sit down a bit at a time and add in my recollections. Here's the basic gist of it all:

Right 'round mid October I was just starting to get into the swing of things here in sunny Landstuhl. We were hanging out with the locals, learning to identify beer types by the sound they make when you pour them, starting to tune out the 0550 cacophony of dueling church bells; in short, all was well. That should have been a warning sign.

I won't flog old news too violently, but on October 8th there was a devastating earthquake in Pakistan. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 or so people buried alive. Hundreds of thousands homeless, broken, traumatized and bereft. The kind of thing that really makes you wish you hadn't spent an entire half of an hour the previous day whining about how the ATM was out of service so you had to walk all the way across the street to another ATM so you could buy your $3 latte.

At first, it did not seem that the earthquake would have any direct impact on me. I am, although it is not carved in stone anywhere, sort of understood to be here as an orthopaedic / trauma guy in support of the wounded coming from Iraq and Afghanistan. In that capacity, they do try to keep me available here. Over the following days, the news came down that the 212th MASH, the Army's last remaining MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, a la Hawkeye Pierce, for those of you who might have missed out on the invention of television), would be activated to deploy to Pakistan in support of earthquake relief. That unit has an orthopaedic surgeon of their own and it seemed that was that.

Not so. Someone in the decision making chain decided that given the nature of the trauma that would likely be encountered on this mission it would be prudent to take along an additional ortho guy. And that guy ended up being me. I have to say, that was a good decision. In retrospect, one surgeon would have been savagely overwhelmed by what we were to see.

So one day I went to work as usual, and 48 hours later I was on a plane to Pakistan. Truth be told, I was glad. Not that I want to leave my family behind or anything, but this mission was unique. A truly humanitarian opportunity to practice surgery mostly on instinct. I was psyched. Given the time-sensitive nature of trauma, we figured on being gone 6 weeks or so, although the Army being the Army no-one really knew. But off we went never-the-less.

And then the fun began. From the time I showed up to move out, to the time I set foot in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan was about 48 hours. And it was 48 crazy little hours, man. Like, way crazy. And then it got crazier.

I leave you here, gentle reader, with a few pictures in anticipation of my next entry. First is just me, sitting in front of the hospital. Next, another view of our hospital. As you can see, it really is in a tent just like on the TV show. And third, a picture of what used to be the side of a mountain. All the white area is landslide (you can see the enourmous pile of earth). The village you see at the base used to be a bit bigger. And that is why we were there.

More later.
NV