It rained today. It rained in a lot of ways. All day long it was dusty and dry. And then in the evening, when the wind was blowing up the most dust, to the point you couldn't breath...it started to rain. And the dust went away. Now I sit in my bed, listening to the raindrops tap on the AC unit above my head, and all is well.
Prayer is like rain. It washes away the dust and confusion so that at the end of the day, you can see what is really important and take a deep breath of fresh air. Thank you God for prayer...and for always being there for me.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Saint Elijah's Monastary
Yesterday I was able to take a trip to the adjoining FOB Marez, and tour an ancient monastery built circa 600 AD. It is the site where 150 monks were given an ultimatum to convert from Christianity to Islam or die.... they all met the Lord that day. It was a very rich experience that I videoed and photographed. These were some of the pics I took there. For more information about the monastery here is a good link from the Smithsonian Institute
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-iraq-a-monastery-rediscovered-12457610/
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Things To Look Foward To...
Well I am over half way through...Praise Jesus. I miss my family very much, but skype has really revolutionized deployment. Now I am looking forward to the opening of a new "restaurant" on the FOB. They say only one week till it opens…this is a really big deal. Imagine it like this, remember the movie CastAway with Tom Hanks…now imagine how different the movie would have been had he had a McDonalds on the Island…see what I mean.
And I also want to take a moment to say how awesome my wife is. She is really amazing, since I have been gone she has painted 5 different rooms, done all the landscape pruning and weeding, figured out how the sprinkler work (a feat I wasn’t able to do in 6 months at home), and raised a 6 month old and is helping God make a new human being inside her…oh yeah and she traveled to Kansas with herself an infant and two cats, dropped the cats off in Kansas, drove to Colorado, then back to Kansas, then back to Texas all while pregnant. She is beautiful; she is a great mom, a loving friend, a solid Christian, and an amazing wife. I definitely married up. And I can’t wait to get home so I can tell her that face to face.
I love you sweetheart.
Eric
Someone who is gonna get a big hug when I get home!
And I also want to take a moment to say how awesome my wife is. She is really amazing, since I have been gone she has painted 5 different rooms, done all the landscape pruning and weeding, figured out how the sprinkler work (a feat I wasn’t able to do in 6 months at home), and raised a 6 month old and is helping God make a new human being inside her…oh yeah and she traveled to Kansas with herself an infant and two cats, dropped the cats off in Kansas, drove to Colorado, then back to Kansas, then back to Texas all while pregnant. She is beautiful; she is a great mom, a loving friend, a solid Christian, and an amazing wife. I definitely married up. And I can’t wait to get home so I can tell her that face to face.
I love you sweetheart.
Eric
Someone who is gonna get a big hug when I get home!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Academic Day
Today I am trying a little experiment. I am going to see if I can stay in my CHU all day long. So far, I had to get up for morning report, but after that, I came back and slept for another couple hours. Once I got up (at around 11AM) I had a QT and read todays passage from “Streams in the Desert” (thanks Mom), I started reading some surgical texts, then listened to some SESAP (surgical education and self assessment program) lectures. Now I’m bloging and still have no hair… very low maintenance. It’s already 4 PM, and I’m not on call. Of course, being “on call” is relative here…like saying, my cat, papaya, likes me. And then just as I wrote this a group of people knocked on my door and asked me to go to the gym….so much for staying in my room al day…..Love you all. Have a great day, I know I will have one too.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Go Rockies!
The Rockies won yesterday against the San Diego Padres! I am thankful that AFN (armed forces network) sees the Rockies as worthy enough to show a complete game, even though I had to stay up till 0100hrs to see the eighth inning....then I fell asleep and then woke up at 0200 to the sound of sportscenter and saw that the Rox held on to a 4-2 victory!
I'm on call today but hopefully I can take a little nap now and be ready for any late night shananagans that the Mosul night life has to offer.
Also, it seems I have had some missadventures with shaving my mustache off....
I'm on call today but hopefully I can take a little nap now and be ready for any late night shananagans that the Mosul night life has to offer.
Also, it seems I have had some missadventures with shaving my mustache off....
Its A Beautiful Day
It is an absolutely beautiful day. I am sitting on a deck overlooking the FOB and the helicopters going in and out. Recently I’ve been earning my money, usually in the middle of the night. But today it seems like things are quiet and I have some time to reflect on the past few weeks.
Things here go in waves. Whether boardem, squabbles, drama, loneliness, happiness, or real work, it seems that it goes and comes like the waves on the shore. The sand doesn’t have to worry about the water permanently submerging it. The water will go and come as regular as a heartbeat. And so it goes with life in the CSH.
With the waves life is now about the battle rhythm. We have adapted to the new normal, which no one back home would find normal. Midnight trips to bunkers, or the whole CSH waiting on a medivac to arrive (just like the opening credits of MASH), it all is peculiarly normal. Now most of us come from a hospital setting back home, so we are already used to a lifestyle that others would find atypical. But now, with the addition of a war zone, and guns, our lifestyle can be downright comical. For instance, where else would you find yourself in boxer shorts, t-shirt, boots, and an M16 huddled in a small dusty bunker just the right size for a hobbit, with 5 of your coed colleagues from work in similar attire?:) Now imagine that encounter happening on a semi regular bases. After a while…this becomes normal.
Now this is one normal occurrence among many. Other things include, the “executive game” poker night, cigars, bon fires, finding the best “ingredients” to add to your coffee, trips to the PX to find the newest shipment of stuff you don’t really need, new techniques for redecorating your CHU.
In addition to having new norms, you also acquire new skill that will be useless in any other setting such as: being able to tell what type of aircraft is arriving by how it sounds, knowing the least popular times to use the showers, how to season fish using normal condiments so that it tastes like a different dish than the week before, how to combine a PT reflective belt, a Ipod, and your ID so that it is one unit and can be easily doffed and donned when going to the gym, how to make an online ordering form fit in such a way that things can get delivered to Iraq, convincing your insurance agency or really any company in the US that you are not driving in your car on your cell phone, and that you have no “land line” to call from, and that you really are in Iraq.
And so, as I have said before, “life goes on.” I am now about half way done with my tour here, and I can tell I write a lot less than earlier in the deployment. I think that is because things become like I have said, so normal, and sometimes it’s hard to write about normal things. The other reason is because there are many things that I just can’t write about (but that is for the good and safety of the soldiers here…I would be naive if I thought that no one with nefarious purposes would have access to this blog and use the information herein to the detriment of the troops here).
I try to write down the significant things that happen to me here…and by far the thing that is the most amazing so far is how God protects our soldiers (see previous blog entries). That’s not to say there aren’t tragedies that we deal with here. As in any war, there is death. And here those losses are felt acutely by those that knew and lived and worked with the guys that don’t make it home…a soldier that just got engaged, or the one who’s wife back home is pregnant. We see those too. Right now in Iraq the culture is violent…but our nation has its share of violent culture as well, so I can’t throw stones. Weather its south side of Chicago, Washington DC, or Mosul violence abounds. With just a google search you will find that 4 people were killed in DC, 3 people were killed in Mosul, and 3 people were killed in Chicago all yesterday. What for?...gangs and domestic dispute in the US but here it was some police officers and a random guy; for what reasons… maybe ideology…..I do not know for sure, but not as easily classifiable as our home grown violence that we seem to be comfortable with, or at least aren’t reporting on the mainstream media.
But even death is part of the battle rhythm. Now for some of us working in the hospital, death is no stranger…especially people who deal with trauma back home. It happens. Death here or back home always feels the same… and now that this blog entry has turned very morose I don’t feel like describing the feeling. Needless to say the feeling ain’t great. But today is another day with new possibilities and problems to solve. And I need to leave you now to go take care of the medivac coming in….something about a peritonsilar abscess. But I will leave you with a few shots around the FOB…little glimpses of my life here.
Poker Night...no real money at stake of course.
The winning shot...March Madness has nothing on us...move over Blue Devils
This little book from Hood Publications Inc. has every one here jealous that they too aren't "hoodlems" too. Happy Birthday Don...am I the first to wish you Happy B-day?
Thanks Mom and Dad for the Posters!
They Have some pretty scarry banditos over here
Two things that makes life here very sweet!
Things here go in waves. Whether boardem, squabbles, drama, loneliness, happiness, or real work, it seems that it goes and comes like the waves on the shore. The sand doesn’t have to worry about the water permanently submerging it. The water will go and come as regular as a heartbeat. And so it goes with life in the CSH.
With the waves life is now about the battle rhythm. We have adapted to the new normal, which no one back home would find normal. Midnight trips to bunkers, or the whole CSH waiting on a medivac to arrive (just like the opening credits of MASH), it all is peculiarly normal. Now most of us come from a hospital setting back home, so we are already used to a lifestyle that others would find atypical. But now, with the addition of a war zone, and guns, our lifestyle can be downright comical. For instance, where else would you find yourself in boxer shorts, t-shirt, boots, and an M16 huddled in a small dusty bunker just the right size for a hobbit, with 5 of your coed colleagues from work in similar attire?:) Now imagine that encounter happening on a semi regular bases. After a while…this becomes normal.
Now this is one normal occurrence among many. Other things include, the “executive game” poker night, cigars, bon fires, finding the best “ingredients” to add to your coffee, trips to the PX to find the newest shipment of stuff you don’t really need, new techniques for redecorating your CHU.
In addition to having new norms, you also acquire new skill that will be useless in any other setting such as: being able to tell what type of aircraft is arriving by how it sounds, knowing the least popular times to use the showers, how to season fish using normal condiments so that it tastes like a different dish than the week before, how to combine a PT reflective belt, a Ipod, and your ID so that it is one unit and can be easily doffed and donned when going to the gym, how to make an online ordering form fit in such a way that things can get delivered to Iraq, convincing your insurance agency or really any company in the US that you are not driving in your car on your cell phone, and that you have no “land line” to call from, and that you really are in Iraq.
And so, as I have said before, “life goes on.” I am now about half way done with my tour here, and I can tell I write a lot less than earlier in the deployment. I think that is because things become like I have said, so normal, and sometimes it’s hard to write about normal things. The other reason is because there are many things that I just can’t write about (but that is for the good and safety of the soldiers here…I would be naive if I thought that no one with nefarious purposes would have access to this blog and use the information herein to the detriment of the troops here).
I try to write down the significant things that happen to me here…and by far the thing that is the most amazing so far is how God protects our soldiers (see previous blog entries). That’s not to say there aren’t tragedies that we deal with here. As in any war, there is death. And here those losses are felt acutely by those that knew and lived and worked with the guys that don’t make it home…a soldier that just got engaged, or the one who’s wife back home is pregnant. We see those too. Right now in Iraq the culture is violent…but our nation has its share of violent culture as well, so I can’t throw stones. Weather its south side of Chicago, Washington DC, or Mosul violence abounds. With just a google search you will find that 4 people were killed in DC, 3 people were killed in Mosul, and 3 people were killed in Chicago all yesterday. What for?...gangs and domestic dispute in the US but here it was some police officers and a random guy; for what reasons… maybe ideology…..I do not know for sure, but not as easily classifiable as our home grown violence that we seem to be comfortable with, or at least aren’t reporting on the mainstream media.
But even death is part of the battle rhythm. Now for some of us working in the hospital, death is no stranger…especially people who deal with trauma back home. It happens. Death here or back home always feels the same… and now that this blog entry has turned very morose I don’t feel like describing the feeling. Needless to say the feeling ain’t great. But today is another day with new possibilities and problems to solve. And I need to leave you now to go take care of the medivac coming in….something about a peritonsilar abscess. But I will leave you with a few shots around the FOB…little glimpses of my life here.
Poker Night...no real money at stake of course.
The winning shot...March Madness has nothing on us...move over Blue Devils
This little book from Hood Publications Inc. has every one here jealous that they too aren't "hoodlems" too. Happy Birthday Don...am I the first to wish you Happy B-day?
Thanks Mom and Dad for the Posters!
They Have some pretty scarry banditos over here
Two things that makes life here very sweet!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)