Down Time in the Desert

What I will try to do here is give a little tour of Salerno. These are some of our rooms. I walk past this tree every morning going to the shower, which is about 200 feet from my room. I call it the bird tree, because I swear at least 200 birds live in it. I guess there's not that much choice of good trees around, so they can't be picky.

Here is the chapel. They have different style services (Catholic, Protestant, LDS, etc) here at various times during the week.

Trevor and Jerry are standing on a volleyball court in front of the gym in the background. The gym is in that big tent and has a good selection of free weights, machines, and cardio equipment.

These are the docs at the hospital from left: orthopedic surgeon, (me--anesthesiologist), general surgeon, general surgeon, internal medicine.

This is looking over towards where a patient would be wheeled on a litter from where the helicopters land.

Being the capitalists we are, we have a bazaar set up on base and let the local nationals come and sell their goods. While there are a lot of neat places selling afghans, rugs, scarfs, and stones, not everything is genuine Afghan product. You can see the Blockbuster sign in this photo where pirated movies are sold. These are all made here in Asia and almost anything can be found for around $2. I'm not really into that, but some people are.

You can also get a nice cup of hot tea at the bazaar in your down time.

Speaking of hot drinks, why not have some coffee and read out in the sun, something you definitely don't get enough of in England!

And while we're killing time, why not do a hand stand. I mean what else are you going to do for 12 hours of sitting around?

After we're done doing handstands, we head off to the gym to start lifting as much weight as we possibly can until our bodies hurt.

This is my crew I always work out with, Jerry and Trevor, and Robyn, the ortho surgeon.

This particular night was pizza night......in the operating room. Here you can see our buffet line where you can pick your toppings before you cook you pizza.

After you are done picking your toppings for your pizza, you hand it to the chef (one of our scrub techs) and get it cooked. Now, we don't exactly have ovens in the hospital, but we do have intrument sterilizers! Through trial and error, 350 degrees at 20 PSI pressure for 15 minutes seems to get the job done.

Yes the last couple of weeks have pretty low key and relaxed here. Life has been pretty good, but is getting a little interesting in the last few days. Bagram Air Base, the large AF base in country here, has only 1 runway, and this runway serves the military for the entire country, at least for the big cargo jets. Last week the runway was down because this C-17 Globemaster crash landed with no landing gears. They had to fly in a crane from the US to lift it. Therefore, all the mail going out to the FOB's stopped. No mail!


Otherwise, everything is good, and until the weather warms up, the action might be a little slow around here. So I'll just keep drinking coffee, enjoying the sun, and waiting for the next adventure. I will post again soon, seeya later!