We have also been busy doing humanitarian work. There is a high incidence of a certain blood disorder here called Thallesemia. Kids who have this develop large spleens that consume all of their red blood cells, and removing their spleen can improve their quality of life. This is called a splenectomy. We perform lots of these. As you can see on the OR board for this week, there are plenty of splenectomies waiting to be done.
We just removed the spleen from this little boy. We placed it beside him to show how large these things can be.
But the action doesn't stop with the pediatric surgery of course. Here you see one of our Blackhawks parked on the helipad doing a hot off-load of an injured patient.
This is an example of the type of trauma that can come to us on any given day. This is a CT scan picture of a patient who had shrapnel in the heart--never ideal. You are looking at a slice through the body, with the patient lying on his back. The starburst in the upper right part of the picture is the metal in the heart reflecting the x-ray beams away.
Occasionally we have traumas that consume most or all of our blood products here. When that happens, as it has a few times, we initiate the walking blood donor program. An announcement goes out over the loudspeaker for "Persons with A positive blood type please report to the CSH."
The call goes out and within minutes, hundreds of soldiers and airmen are lining up ready to donate blood for their buddies. Its really impressive.
It's days like today that make the time go by fast.
Yes, that's an In-N-Out Burger cap. Some people reading this blog have IN-N-OUT in their neighborhoods.
It's just another day flipping burgers here at Salerno.
After a hard day's work, it's time for some pizza, cooked up fresh in the sterilizers and eaten on the same OR tables where we were operating 1 hour before.
Later in the month, we were visited by Toby Kieth. He comes to perform for the troops every year, and has been for the last 7 years. When in country, he will be here for 10 days and put on 3 to 4 concerts a day to hit all the FOBs. While he and his main guitar player were playing at smaller FOBs during the day, his band was at Salerno setting up for our evening performance.
As small as Salerno is, it is large compared to some of the other FOBs and outposts out here, so the full band usually sets up at larger venues. Anyway, the band was here and walked through the hospital meeting people and thanking us for our service.
Here we are hanging out at the SF compound before the show.
The show rocked. It lasted around 2 hours. Toby Kieth is one of the funniest guys I have ever seen in concert.
The concert was held in a large tent structure that is used as the fire station. Toby also let us know about his chain of restaurant/bars called "I Love This Bar." They are located in about 7 states with more coming. In them he displays momentos and gifts received during all his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. He let us know that for members of the military, food and drinks are always on the house. As you can imagine, that got a small cheer.
So as many of you know, I am very much into flying/aviation. The runway here at Salerno is gravel, so not every type of aircraft can land here. However, there is a fair variety I have managed to photo.
This is a very interesting looking jet. The engines are mounted high on the wings. This gives the plane an advantage as the jet intake is farther away from the dirt and gravel on the runway. I believe this plane is used by the Blackwater firm for manpower and supplies. If anyone can identify it, please comment! I would like to know.
If I am not mistaken, this is a Soviet make helicopter. I'm not exactly sure what it is doing here. If anyone can ID this, comment!
Here we are on top of a Blackhawk. Matt and Derek gave us a little tour.
This is a C-130 that looks different from the typical Air Force C-130 landing here. It is painted totally black and has grey Canadian flag markings. These are Canadian troops deplaning to join the fight here.
When these Chinooks are in flight, they are really loud and fun to watch. This one is shipping some type of cargo.
But the highlight was sitting in this Kiowa attack helicopter. These are very fast and agile, and not too much bigger than a Cessna 172. That's a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the side beside my leg.
We on the FOB got to see one of these in action (kinda) one night. I was sitting in my room and heard the usual helicopters buzzing all over, but then I heard one firing its 50 cal. It sounds like a deep buzzing roar as its firing. I went out side and joined several other people outside watching. Of course, it's pitch black here and there was no moon out, but you could hear him hovering somewhere directly over our heads. Then suddenly there were tracer rounds appearing out of the blackness above, followed by the time delayed sound of the 50 cal machine gun, heading into the mountain side and creating bright flashes of light where they were hitting. I thought "wow, it would suck to be on the business end of that tonight."
Over at the special forces compound, they were hearing the same thing we were. Two of the guys were playing X-BOX Call of Duty and shooting each other up. Another guy came running in and said "they are shooting at someone over there, grab your rifle and come up on the roof!" They looked at their video game, looked at each other, and said "cool." They then paused the game. PAUSED IT! I think if I were about to take a sniper rifle with a night vision scope and go up to the roof and kill somebody, I wouldn't have the foresight to pause my video game with the intent to return to it once my deed was done. Well they ran up there with their assault weapons and there were others on the roof watching the show. They looked at these guys and said "what in the world are you guys doing, the helicopter is just target practicing." Oops.
Here is a picture of the cockpit of the Kiowa. I was particularly fond of the sticker that reads:
"CHUCK NORRIS IS WITH YOU"
