The First Two Weeks

Well I’m settled in here at Salerno. Week 1 was pretty low key. We received an inservice on loading patients onto the Blackhawk helicopters. These helicopters will fly out to where soldiers have been injured and pick them up to bring back to our hospital. We also use them to medivac patients out to the bigger hospital at Bagram Air Field west of here.

These are two of the guys I work out/hang out with in our down time. Trevor is a radiology tech and Jerry is a scrub tech. In the first few days we have not been too busy. On the 3rd day we did receive patients from an IED blast. One went to surgery with extensive injuries. Other than that in the 1st week we have had lots of gym time and movie time. There is a lounge in the hospital with a big TV where we hang out sometimes. We also often get the chance to do humanitarian surgery on the locals who live here, time permitting. We take out lots of thyroids and the other day cut off a huge skin cancer that was growing out of this guy’s chest. Here is a picture of the trauma bay where injured patients come in off the helicopters.


The “No Photos Allowed” means no public posting of patients.

Here is my office, the OR.

This room actually serves as 2 OR’s, and we are frequently using both tables at the same time. After a few days of down time and not much going on, week 2 has seen a sudden increase in the action. Monday a car bomb exploded just off base. We felt the blast in the hospital. 6 adults and 5 children came in injured and 4 of them went to surgery. Tuesday we received a gunshot wound through the liver and stomach. We heard more blasts and learned that rockets were being fired into a city close to our base from somewhere. For a while we all had to where body armor if going outside. That was a little anxiety provoking but being in the hospital provides a pretty safe structure should anything go unplanned.

Wednesday an IED blast brought in 5 more victims, 2 of which required surgery. The thing that is different about doing these surgeries as opposed to what I am used to doing is that every hole represents a piece of metal that is lodged in the body somewhere, and after one of these blasts, there are holes everywhere.

Wednesday night I think I had gotten a little dehydrated. I was working out with my friends in the gym and started to feel like I was going to vomit. That sounds like I am in terrible shape but that never happens to me. I got into bed hoping for a good night’s rest after drinking lots of water. Around 2:00 am I was suddenly awoken from sleep by the sound of an explosion. I lay in bed in my pitch black room not knowing what was happening, but I was pretty sure it was not a dream. Then it happened again. It sounded kinda like someone was standing in your living room and shooting a shotgun, or maybe like when the thunder hits right over the top of your house shaking all the windows, except several times louder than that. And it happened again, and again, and again. So at this point I started to freak out just a little, wondering if these were mortars coming in. One of my roommates is an Army Colonel, and was in Iraq when Desert Storm started, and here when all this started, and many places in between. He was obviously awake because no one could sleep through that, so I said “is that incoming fire?” He said “no that’s outgoing fire, just try to go back to sleep.”

Oh, my bad, I just thought my room was about to explode into a fireball, sorry about that! I guess it’s routine and maybe not even a big deal to some veterans of this stuff, but it’s a new experience for me. It turns out that one of our huge cannons here was shooting over the base into the hills close by --- and I don’t think they were practicing.

Thursday morning the work continued. We got the call for traumas coming in around 10:00 am. This time was different, they were enemy prisoners who had severe burns and shrapnel injuries, survivors from what appeared to be large artillery blasts several hours earlier. It really didn’t seem much different taking care of these people, even though they were probably Taliban or Al Qaeda and trying to kill us, they just seemed like regular patients clinging to life. It was a little weird to think back on it later in the day though, and I’m sure there will be many more…

Friday provided some relief and rest, no cases, no explosions, a good day to chill. And then today (Saturday), we were back at it with 4 people coming in from an IED blast, surgery on one of them, and a skin graft on a 9 month old baby who came in the other day with burns.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for another edition of my vacation here in Salerno!

One of our Blackhawk pilot's helmets

The Road to Salerno

I am settling in my first week here in Afghanistan. My journey began January 2nd at 4:00 am. I had to take a taxi to the base to pick up my 9mm handgun and then take me down to London to get on a commercial flight. At Heathrow I reported my weapon and they checked it like a piece of luggage. I then met up with 4 or 5 other people headed the same direction with a variety of weapons, and we all filled out our paperwork in a group and stuck together. I took off on British Airways to Frankfurt International Airport, picked up my pistol, and took a taxi up to Ramstein Air Force Base to spend the night. German taxi drivers are interesting. We were driving almost 100 mph (while it was snowing) on the autobahn listening to "danger zone" on the stereo. It was pretty fun. That night I ate at Chili's on the base, and enjoyed the last good food for a long time to come.

The next morning I got up early, headed to the PAX terminal on the base, and checked in for the flight. Our itenerary was taking us to Incirlik Air Base Turkey, and then continuing to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. We boarded a commercial airplane (I was surprised it wasnt military) and headed towards Turkey. Most of the people on the plane looked like me, wearing a military uniform, but there were some civilians and also children on board. As it was getting dark in the skies on the was to Turkey, I looked down and saw some huge mountains with snow all over--very impressive. After it was completely dark, looking out the window I kinda had a feeling of anxiety by not knowing what was waiting for me at the end of my journey, only that the plane was taking me there and there was no turning back. The flight to Turkey lasted around 4 hours. We landed, deplaned, and walked into a terminal and all sat there for about 3 or 4 hours. The military is famous for "hurry up and wait," and this was no different. Fortunately there was a little grill making hamburgers. I had just eaten on the plane but decided to eat again out of sheer boredom. After the hours had gone by we all walked back to the same plane and sat in the seats we had before to continue our journey. This flight had no civilians and no children. We were in the air for another 4 hours heading out of Eastern Europe and into Asia. We made it to Kygyzstan around 6:00 am local time, landing on a snow covered runway.

We all headed into a room where we received a briefing. Some of us would spend a night or 2 here, and some of us would quickly be moving on. I was selected as one of the people who would be flying on to Afghanistan that day.

We spent the entire morning receiving more issued items such as cold weather gear, chemical warfare gear, and body armor. Afterwards we piled up all of our bags on pallets to be loaded onto the next airplane.

The airplane taking us to Afghanistan was a C-17 military aircraft. We were traveling with a large group of Army soldiers heading to various places in Afghanistan. We were packed onto that plane like sardines.

We didnt take off until the early evening, I was already really tired from traveling the entire night before. I was hoping I could find a bed sometime in the near future. What was supposed to be a 90 minute flight down to Bagram Air Field Afghanistan turned out to be much more. The pilot tried 2 or 3 times to land at Bagram, but dense fog kept him from seeing the runway even though he was 400 feet above the ground. So we diverted to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Once we arrived, we deplaned, checked in at the terminal and were taken to some tents at around 2:00 am to sleep.

The next morning, about 6:00 am, we walked back to the terminal to start waiting on a flight out to Bagram. With all the Army people stuck there though, it took all day to get a seat. Finally, around 5:00 pm, we received word there was a C-130 we could fit on to go to Bagram. We rode on the C-130 to Bagram and arrived around 9:00 pm. After we checked in and filled out a bunch of paperwork, we eventually made it to a tent, a pretty large tent with about 50 transient people in it, and slept on a cot.

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Surely this would be the first good night of sleep in a few days. No---it is very cold at Bagram and was below freezing. The large tents have heater ducts blowing warm air into the tents at night. Well ours malfunctioned somehow and was pumping in cold air, causing it to be around 45 degrees in the tent. It’s hard to sleep while shivering… The next day I completed a checklist of things to do, including picking up ammunition for my weapon. The funny thing about this was that since I am medical, I picked up my ammo in the hospital. As an anesthesiologist, not only can I check out a bag full of narcotics, I am now able to check out 45 rounds of ammo for my handgun!

We were informed that we had a C-130 going to Salerno leaving at guess what time…2:00 am. At 10:00 pm I showed up with the other people heading out to Salerno, carrying all 4 of my bags of issued gear plus backpack plus handgun, and began waiting. Finally we boarded the C-130 and took off for Salerno. These military airplanes have no windows, but you can kinda tell when you are about to land based on how things feel and sound. Going into Salerno was a different experience. In a forward location such as this, you don’t want a long smooth approach just over the enemy’s heads. So there was quite a bit of wild maneuvering getting down to the runway—which is all gravel by the way. You had no idea when the landing was coming, and suddenly SLAM there it was, not smooth, not graceful, just getting down to the ground quickly. In fact one of our guys happened to stand up to reach for a bag or something when we slammed the ground, and he got thrown about 5 feet over a few people—pretty funny. We did a hot offload of the plane, meaning they lowered the ramp in the back of the plane and you get off with the engines running. The C-130’s never stay at Salerno, they just unload, load, and take off. Walking out of the back of that plane we entered the darkness. Salerno is a very, very dark place at night. There is a strict blackout policy here, and the only lights that can be used are red, green, or blue flashlights. We were met by hospital people and taken to our rooms to sleep.

This is my new home, my little corner of the room. Beautiful isn't it! At least it's not a tent...