Arrival in Afghanistan...

Hello Everyone from Bagram Air Field just outside Kabul, Afghanistan!

I arrived here early in the morning on Christmas Eve. Getting here was painful as expected. Military travel is hellacious to say the least. We crossed 11 time zones, had several flights in the middle of the night, and did not have a good night of sleep for 5 days in order to get here. The final leg involved 50 of us crammed into an extremely loud cargo plane called a C-130. We had our "full battle rattle" which consists of body armor, helmet, and weapons. It was 15 degrees outside when we took off for the 2 hour flight. Pretty soon thereafter the heat was blasting in the plane and it was probably 90 degrees in there. It was not fun. What else can I say?

I've now been at Bagram 4 days. I am living in a structure called a B Hut. It's a wooden building with living space partitioned off on the inside. My bed is comfortable. My area is about 8 x 6 feet. The bottom line is that it is my own for now. It's amazing to have some privacy. We do not have indoor plumbing living in a B Hut. There is a bathroom and shower facility about 50 yards away. Luckily, it has not been too cold so far. Walking outside to take a shower or go to bathroom during the middle of the night is not my favorite thing to do. Oh well, I will survive.

They are easing me into the job at work. I was a bit shocked on Christmas day to find out that I will be working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) here. We have a nice hospital here at Bagram. Last year it was one of the busiest trauma hospitals in the world. It has room for about 50 inpatients. We also have busy clinics too. We have many specialists here, primarily surgeons for all the trauma patients. Our ENT surgeon is my next door neighbor. We also have a neurosurgeon, a trauma surgeon (known as the "trauma czar"), an eye surgeon, 2 orthopedic surgeons, 3 general surgeons, etc.

Right now most of our hospital patients are Afghans. We treat a lot of locals here when they are victims of violence for whatever reason. On Christmas day we had an Afghan patient who was a pedestrian hit by one of our vehicles. He did not make it. It's unclear if he intentionally walked out in front of the vehicle. Apparently that has happened in the past because payments have been made to Afghans for this type of thing. All I know is that we did everything we could to save this guy, but his injuries were just too devastating.

Okay, I think that is enough for now. Tomorrow I will start working full time. It should be interesting having a little old family doc in the ICU of a busy military trauma hospital!!!