Working Nights

Well, I have officially started working nights now. Last night was my first night on and I worked about 15 hours. We did some shifting of personnel and this is how it all ended up. It will take a little getting used to of course, but it should be fine. I am now assigned to the Intermediate Care Ward (ICW) instead of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). That's fine by me, probably a little less stress this way although I will probably be asked to handle some critical patients when we are really busy.

We were busy last night with several patients aerovaced to Bagram from various places in Afghanistan. One will not make it unfortunately. The other ones will make it to Germany for further treatment and should be okay. What I am noticing the most right now is that we are not taking care of many Americans in the hospital right now. Only about 25% of our hospital patients are Americans. I guess that is a good thing in many ways. The bad guys tend to hole up in their caves for the winter here. Thus, we see less wounded soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors (yes, we have Navy personnel on the ground here too in certain career fields). But, the violence goes on and on. It's the civilian contractors and the locals that are taking the hits right now. We even have some "Enemies of Peace" (EOP) at our facility. That's the latest designation for bad guys. It's pretty strange to treat a known or suspected terrorist. One EOP that I dealt with last night just looked like a bad guy. Treating him is that much more challenging. It's something we all have to get used to doing here.

Off to bed now than back at it tonight. At least working nights I will be able to make a few more calls home when things are slow at night and it is daytime back in the U.S. I miss the good old U.S.A.!!!