Afghanistan: The Home Stretch

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It's been a little while since I've written, but I can't say that much has happened. Easter, Memorial Day, and we killed Osama bin Laden. Otherwise, business as usual.

At the end of my last blog, I was getting excited about soon becoming the squadron "on deck" to leave theater. Well, the time has come and gone -- we're now NEXT! I can't even describe the feeling of excitement about that. It's like Christmas, Easter, and your birthday as a little kid all rolled into one. I can barely contain myself. We're right around a month out, and talk everywhere is for preparation for returning. I've already started mailing some of my stuff home. Mom got the footlocker at home and is also getting excited about how close we are! We're in that phase right before you move when you try to use up all of the food and consumables you have before you go. Maggie and I will be baking up a storm in the next month!

Easter here was pretty uneventful. Maggie and I tried to make it special. We dyed Easter eggs (fortunately the DFACs here have a good supply of hard boiled eggs -- finding ones that weren't really cracked was the challenge though!). It was just like a regular Easter from childhood! Paas still makes some fun dying kits -- complete with stickers! So we made a whole bunch and put different people's names on them so they could have their own Easter egg. Displayed in the ready room on Easter, they were a nice little celebratory focal point. 😊 We also filled those little plastic eggs with candy and Maggie hid them all around the squadron very early on Easter morning. I'm still not sure if everyone found them, but it was a fun day of little plastic eggs popping up all over. Good job Maggs 😊 She also made quite a spread! We may be somewhat limited by ingredients out here, but she is quite creative. She made a fruit crisp by combining mixed fruit with I think pudding (maybe it was yogurt), baked with butter and brown sugar, topped with granola. YUM! We also decorated awesome sugar cookies made and sent by one of the pilot's wives. I have a weakness for sugar cookies, and these were PERFECTLY baked!

The church services during the Holy Week were mostly lead by other pastors. The one that I like best only did the Sunday morning Easter service. This was the first time I've actually gone to all of the services -- Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. It was a very religious week for me! It was nice though -- I got to see a range of different services. Very peaceful and refreshing. Since then, I had gone every Sunday to church, and even went one Sat night to hear a different pastor. It was the guy who did the sermon on Good Friday. His voice sounds like he could be narrating a show from the 1950's, much like William H. Macy, and he sort of looks like it too. He has the features of a little boy with slightly protruding ears, overlaid with the middle-aged man look. His sermon was very engaging. He told a story and was very expressive. The story wasn't very memorable, but was enough to make me want to try him again. So a couple of weeks later, I went to his service on Sat night -- a traditional Protestant service (vs contemporary where they sing everything). I found his sermon that night to be more about trying to convince us that the Bible was a true story, than preaching about what the story meant. For honest comparison, I went the next day to the service I usually go to on Sun mornings. Sure enough, my usual pastor's sermon was about the meaning of the story, and how to interpret it in modern times. So, not a big fan of the new guy. The Sat night service was pretty much out. And the pastor that I liked so much had his last service in mid-May. After he left, the guy from the Sat night service was taking over the Sun morning service. Since the main reason I was going was for the sermons, that effectively ended my 6mos of religion. I haven't been back to church since, and I don't feel too bad about it (until this nice old man -- very grandfatherly -- who works at the Wing, asked about me in a meeting with Maggie. It was a nice little run, but I'm not too interested in the other services here. However, I might go to the Gospel service next week to see what it's like (one of the girls from the squadron goes, so I might go with her).

I've been trying to fly a lot while I'm out here. It's always harder to find time to fly back home, but out here it's so easy and gives me something to do. If I didn't get sick, I think I'd really enjoy flying, and this would be the best job ever. However, because I've gotten motion sick on almost every single flight so far, it really takes any fun out of it that there could have been. I have to get 4 hours of flight time per month to keep my flight pay, and the Navy is starting to get serious about it. I'm pretty sure someone very high up is trying to get some kind of award by saving the government money, but they're doing it by retroactively taking it away from flight surgeons. Last August, they decided that they would start auditing everyone's flight time. Since they do it by fiscal year, that left just the month of Sept for people to make up any hours they were missing. There are many who are stationed with non-flying squadrons (like when I was with MALS last year in Iraq) or can't get away to fly for some reason. They submitted waivers, but I've heard that they were all denied, despite the fact that at SCHOOL they were telling us that we could just submit a waiver if needed for that. I can't help but feel like someone is trying to save as much money as possible for the Navy by summarily denying all waiver requests. Fortunately I had flown my butt off in Iraq so I had enough hours to carry me through to the end of last fiscal year. Still, they took a little under 1 month's pay away from me for some reason. It's probably not worth fighting it for $100, but the principle is irritating. In a time where they have a drastic shortage of flight surgeons, about the only thing they're doing with this new policy that was enacted retroactively, is convincing some of the flight surgeons who were on the fence about staying in to get out as soon as their contracts are up. I don't have that option (I owe the Navy 4 more years from this July, not including residency if I do a Navy residency) and I'm not sure if I'd get out. But it's pretty insulting how they're handling our pay. Really makes you feel unappreciated.

Anyway, back to my air sickness problems. I've tried almost everything -- Ginger, B6, acupressure, sitting the entire time in the jumpseat up in the cockpit. Nothing. I've sort of been able to deal with it -- it wasn't as bad at night in the jumpseat. But lately even that has been tough. So the last couple of times I self-medicated. I used less-drowsy Dramamine (which is just meclizine). I got so tired by the end of the flight I was falling asleep in the chair. The first time, I got such a drug hangover that I went home and slept for 10h straight, then woke up in the middle of the afternoon feeling groggy, which did not get better during the day. The second time I just got a little tired, but didn't have that drug hangover. Still, the idea is to be able to fly without using meds. I can sort of get away with it because as the flight surgeon, my role is just to observe and/or help out a little in the back. I can't replace one of the regular crew, though. So no one is really depending on me to be alert. I still feel bad about it. If they can't do it, why should I be allowed to? So I'm trying to fly as much as I can without meds. My goal was to get enough hours to bank ahead for 6 mos (which I think is the farthest ahead you can bank). Now, though, I might just try to get until the end of the fiscal year (which I'm about 3h away from!). I just wish I didn't get sick -- it would be SO much more fun if I could actually DO something on the flight and help out, rather than just sit there like a log up front. I've only tried the acupressure thing once (the Sea Bands), so I'll try them again and see.

It has been so hot -- generally in the 130s in the sun and 110s in the shade -- and in the cockpit when we measured the temp a few days ago it was 150 inside. Holy cow that's hot. I'm not sure if the heat helps or hurts me though. When I fly, if I'm starting to get air sick, it usually begins with my body flushing -- sort of like if you were scared. When that happens, I get a little hot/sweaty. Sometimes that sets up a self-perpetuating cycle -- I can feel myself getting sweaty because of it, so I get more air sick. However, if it's hot out, I'm already a hot puddle, so if I flush a little, I don't even notice it. I was thinking that might help. I've only had one flight to try it out in the extreme heat (it's still hot at night, but not THAT hot -- only 80s-90s).

I've kept up with my favorite pastimes here -- reading, watching tv/movies, and cooking (well, really it's eating). I guess you could throw working out in there, but here it's more painful than anything. There's no air conditioning in the gym, and it's usually hotter in there than it is outside. Pretty awful. I can't wait to go home and have AIR CONDITIONING in the gym again. Just one of the many things you don't appreciate until you don't have it. The AC in the buildings functions fairly well (sometimes not as well as others). And we got new units in our cans about a month ago, so now we can keep it like an icebox in there! Wow is that nice!

As for reading, I've read a LOT of books (it's so nice to be able to do that again! I need to make time for it when I go home...) I'm currently reading the Ender's Game series. It's actually on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' reading list, but for Lance Corporals (who are usually about 19 or 20 years old). I must say, though, it's a pretty good series. The second book should definitely be made into a movie. It lays itself out very well for it. I just finished the third and, same thing -- it should be a movie. One thing I've decided out here is I think I'm going to buy a Kindle or Nook when I get home. Maybe just the iPad. We'll see. Any suggestions? It would be nicer to carry around that then a big clunky book, though. Most times I would have chosen the book because the paperbacks are small and fit into my pocket. Looks like the Nook/Kindle would fit into my pocket too, though. Someone needs to come up with one of those things that collapses down to the size of a phone when you're not using it. THAT would be neat.

I've also watched a lot of TV series and movies out here. First off, I think the movie Easy A was highly underrated. I watched that the other night, thinking it would be some dumb high school movie like Mean Girls. Not so! The main character really made the movie. She was like a less in-your-face version of Juno. Great writing and great casting! I would say that's my biggest surprise movie of this year, make that many years. I also watched the movie Paul. Funny! Seth Rogen is the perfect voice for the alien. A fun light-hearted movie that I recommend on a quiet stay-at-home night, or a have-some-friends-over-with-some-beers night. And for favorite new TV series, I have to say that Archer is awesome. I had never heard of it, but it's apparently still running -- I think on Fox, but not sure about that. The main character REALLY reminds me of my cousin Mikey. It's a little bit of the character's intonation and a little bit of his sense of humor. By the way, it's animated, but very funny. Check it out and let me know if you see Mikey too. 😊 Of course, now I'm deep in Mad Men -- Maggie is obsessed, and if I want to hang out with her socially, it will probably involve an episode or two of Mad Men.

And for the third pastime on that list, cooking/eating, we've done quite well. Like I said, Maggie is very creative with food. I am too, when the mood strikes me. Lately, though, I've been content to muddle through with whatever food they serve us on the flight line. It's probably very similar to prison food, though I don't really know what prison food is like. Maybe someone out there can chime in on that one. It's sometimes palatable, and when it's not, I just make a panini with ham and cheese. Even those had gotten old, so I started spacing them out. It's amazing, though, what you can make with a panini press, pancake maker, and olive oil. Fresh ingredients from the chow hall lends well to almost anything we want to cook. We often do english muffin pizzas as well. Recently we got the idea of making fresh pasta. One of the pilots here was talking about how he always makes fresh pasta at home. When we found out how simple -- eggs and flour -- we decided we'd give it a try. I have a friend who knows a guy who can get us things. 😊 A third-party connection to one of the DFAC managers. We were able to procure 2 dozen eggs! A feat since they are generally staunchly opposed to giving out raw eggs because of health risk blah blah (like I would EVER eat those eggs undercooked!) We actually got the flour from them too, though at the same time mom was sending me a box with flour, so we now have a little extra flour. The eggs are the weird orange color of European eggs. I looked it up, and it usually means that the chickens are eating grass and bugs and stuff as opposed to just the feed, which generally means that they're free range. The other way to get them that color is to feed them crushed up marigolds, I guess to fool people into thinking they're free range. No idea which these were, but I like my light yellow egg yolks, thank you, caged or not.

I guess on some level I knew how easy pasta was to make, but since I never did it, I never REALLY know how incredibly easy. We found a clean surface (the map table in the intel office), laid down a lot of open manila folders (they're sort of clean inside...) and measured out 2 cups of flour. We made a little depression in the flour hill and add 4 eggs and one egg yolk (that's for rich man's pasta apparently). Slowly incorporated with a fork until it made a dough. Then pop it in a ziploc bag to rest for 30min (this is so the gluten can develop). Then it's ready to roll out. Since we didn't have a rolling pin, we used the next best thing we could find -- a can of compressed air. Rolled the pasta out thin and cut it with a hunting knife (expeditionary!) into thin strips. And voila! 3-5min in boiling water and you have fresh pasta! It was only later that I realized that 5min in boiling water really isn't long enough to kill bugs, but probably close enough. I miss irradiated food. At least no one got sick.

Once we had our fresh pasta, all we need was a little creativity with the toppings. We used pesto and olive oil with fresh grated parm (or was it pecorino?) and some yummy honey rolls to go with it. Not a bad little meal! It really made me miss regular old pasta with red sauce. I really hadn't had decent pasta out here yet. All the sauce here tastes a little funny. Not necessarily bad, but funny. Probably because it's swimming in fat from whatever meat it was cooked near. In one of our recent care packages, though, we were lucky enough to have pasta sent! (Thanks Denise!!) We got 3 boxes of different shaped pasta with matched sauces. How awesome! At this moment, Maggie and I are half-way through the second box. Sometimes we have friends over to share it and sometimes not. It's such a wonderful treat!

Speaking of wonderful treats, I was recently lucky enough to eat at the British DFAC here for the first time. Holy cow! I can't believe I've been missing that the whole time out here! The food was incredible. I've eaten there four times so far, and every time was unbelievable -- I actually had a REAL steak, cooked medium on a grill! Not boiled, and not Grade W or whatever the lowest is (apparently the trucks at the US DFACs say "For Prison and Military use only." Sounds like an urban legend, but I have people SWEARING to me that they've seen it... hmmm). Anyway, this steak was the first real steak I'd eaten in 6 months! Another time they had chicken parm, with REAL chicken! I'm convinced the chicken the usually feed us is some other type of bird. It's a little gamier. Maybe that's the free-range talking. I'm not sure.

Even though the food isn't that great here (British DFAC excepted) I still love to eat. 😊 We had our Navy weigh in out here, and like usual, I was very close to the limit. So with a week to go, I finally cracked down and lost 7lbs in 5 days. I know, I set a great example. haha I just love food too much (and have such a sweet tooth!) You'd think after 31 years I'd stop fighting it. I actually tried acupuncture out here. The Navy has started sending people to a course to learn acupuncture (high on my list!), and one of the treatments is for appetite suppression. I had seen other people doing it, so I figured what the heck? I'd give it a try. I had it done 3 times total, and I'm not really sure if it worked, but I think it might have helped a little. It was an interesting experience. Some of the guys out here have had it for sleep trouble, and have RAVED around it. It also works well for smoking cessation. For pain...not so sure. A neat new adjunct that we now have in our arsenal to try though!

I think one of the hardest things about being on deployment is missing out on stuff back home. One of my really good friends got married in May, and I had to miss her big day. It was so disappointing! I travel a lot, and have often been away from home, but for a major
event like that, I would have flown back from around the world to make it. I'm beginning to chafe at not having control over my life to make a decision like that. I think this is the first time I really missed an occasion that only comes once. Last deployment I missed Christmas, which sucked, but it wasn't that bad because there's always next Christmas. I guess I should be thankful that I'll never have to miss the birth of my child. 😊 I always thought that was horrible when men miss their children being born -- especially their first! But that happens so often, I guess it wouldn't be feasible to let everyone go home for that. It would be nice to have the option though. Like, you can go home for a week if you pay for the flight. My guess is that most people wouldn't want to pay that much to go home for that, but at least it would give everyone the option. How much would you pay
to be present for the birth of a child? Or the death of a loved one? Or the wedding of a close friend or family member? $1000? $5000? There are very few occasions that people are allowed to leave theater here. Ultimately, it's up to the command in every case whether or not to allow someone to go home. If they wanted, they could let someone
go home for their best friend's wedding (or funeral), but most wouldn't. They worry about the precedent it would set, and that soon everyone would want to be going home for their best friend's wedding/funeral. The hard line policy they took out here is that you
can only go home if you have an IMMEDIATE family member (sorry grandma/grandpa) who is close to death. There were a couple of other exceptions our command made for extenuating family circumstances, but that's the gist of it. Normally, I would have flown around the world to be there for my dad's hip surgery, but I couldn't go back for that
either. Thank God it turned out ok, but I can't even imagine how bitter I would have been if I hadn't been able to say goodbye in person to my dad if something had gone wrong. So when people talk about the sacrifice we make, what comes to mind first is stuff like
the crappy living conditions, even worse food, and not one single day off in 7 months, but the biggest sacrifice is all the missed occasions, some that will never come again. To me, seeing your child's birth? Priceless.

So life goes on out here, trying to distract ourselves from what we're missing back home. Some of the distractions are painful, and some are pretty entertaining. The painful first... When I applied to dermatology residency last year, it was made abundantly clear to me
that my chances of getting in without research are slim to none. So I started looking into research. It would have been GREAT if I had known that most hospitals and universities have a specific department set up just for research, and that jumping in with a project there would be exceedingly easy. Things that would have been nice to know years ago. From out here, I started looking for things to do research on. I fell into a very heated topic right now -- supplement use. Sports supplements are unregulated by the FDA, and can contain everything from dangerous medications to actual steroids (listed right in the ingredients tab!). How can they get away with something like that, you ask? Because by the time the FDA catches it, they just re-market it under a different name. There are so many out there, and they constantly change. It's like the Taliban -- as soon as you get
one "taken off the market", five more pop up somewhere else. There's actually a really good website that has a ton of information (true information) on supplements and stuff. The people who run it also have the FDA on speed dial. We were seeing problems likely related to a supplement called Jack 3d (seizures, passing out) and notified them, and the FDA is pulling some from the shelves for testing right now. Pretty cool to actually have such a quick effect! The site is humanperformanceresourcecenter.org.

All the talk about supplements centers on the paucity of current research available, and the question of what do we recommend to the command (and by "command", I mean the big Marine Corps). It's tempting to say that no one should be able to use anything since we don't know what's in it, but that's not realistic. Nor is it helpful. The protein supplements that most people use, if used correctly and in the right amounts, are probably more beneficial than harmful. But that just highlights another failing -- the lack of good resources and education on the subject. Every week out here, we have Continuing Medical Education lectures. Recently, the topic was sports supplements. Word got out that we were doing an educational lecture on supplements and there was standing room only. We had physicians, corpsmen, and even non-medical Marines coming to hear the lecture. The people have spoken -- they want to know more! Unfortunately, the lecture just barely scratched the surface. We decided to break it
down into topics because you could never cover all supplements in 1 hour. So there are 4 topics, and I got goaded into doing the one on steroids and steroid alternatives. My talk isn't until July 11, so I'll have a lot of reading to do before then.

The other thing that came out of all the talk on supplements is that I'm going to be involved in a very simple research project. Well, what started out as very simple turned a little more complicated when the powers that be here decided it met criteria for actual research (versus just a little survey). I had to fill out this very long and complicated application, which I think took way more work then the actual research. I might have done more for the application than I'll need to do to write up the article. A few weeks later, and it's finally done. (Through that process I learned how to "track changes"
in Microsoft Word. What a neat function! Very handy if you're working on something with multiple people and emailing it back and forth with edits.) So now we wait for approval. The IRB (Institutional Review Board) was created to oversee research so we
don't do inhumane and unnecessary experiments on people (that we as a medical profession so recently did -- well, not that recently). It's a very involved document that wants to know all about the risks, how you mitigate them, why you think they are
necessary and justified, etc. You'd think that for a simple survey it shouldn't matter, but it still does. They take that stuff very seriously! As soon as it's been approved, we'll do the survey in 1 or 2 days, then we can start analyzing the data and writing it up for submission somewhere. Here's hoping it pans out! That will be one piece of research under my belt. I think 5 was the most that you can get credit for in the application process. But if I had 5 publications, I'd be almost assured of a residency spot in dermatology in the Navy. So there's hope...

The weekly CME lectures have been a very nice hour for me to look forward to. The topics are usually very interesting and very well presented, but it's also a time for all of the various medical people on base to get together and chat. It's a nice little networking/social hour! Usually there's some cookies/snacks, drinks (not the fun kind unfortunately). I've really enjoyed the lectures! I guess I was a little too interested in it, because I sort of volunteered/was asked to give a dermatology lecture. There's no
dermatologist out here, and since I have an interest in it, I was a logical choice. Of the medical issues we see most, sports injuries, dermatology, and psyc rank in the top 3 (possibly in that order). So I decided to pull out a talk I did back at New River on urticaria and angioedema (hives) and expand it to 1 hour. I must have put 30 hours of reading and preparing into that talk. It was the first time I've had to give a 1-hour lecture. I was a little nervous, but it went off without a hitch!

A little more has happened since then, but I'm breaking here so I have something left to write next time (and this blog doesn't become a novel.)

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Photos

Coloring Eggs
Me and Maggie making Easter Eggs for the squadron.

Paas
Yep -- they still make Easter Egg coloring kits!! :)

Easter Eggs for everyone
We put people's names on them. Fun!

Easter Spread
Our little potluck, complete with awesome hand-decorated sugar cookies (by us) and Maggie's yummy fruit granola concoction.

Peep S'mores
OMG yum! I'm a big fan, but I love peeps...

Seder
I went to the Seder dinner they had. There was one that was traditional for "real Jews" ha! and another the next night that was educational. I went to the second. It was great!!

Seder yummies
The dessert section of the Seder! Wow! Very impressive spread. :)

FLAS photo
A picture of the docs at the FLAS.

Another puzzle
This one was a photomosaic -- each piece has little photos on it. Hard! One of the harder puzzles I've done, but still not that hard...

Yum!
One of Maggie's yummy concoctions -- English muffin pizzas!

Beheadings
Joking around at the squadron. This is what greeted Maggie one morning in her office.

Acupuncture
This is how they did it -- a little tack that stays in for about 5 days (until it falls out). It's very very short. This is the point for appetite suppression.

Cosco
Not quite Costco, but this was at the Class 1 yard -- where we go to pick up food supplies for the squadron. All of the shipping containers in the background are full of food and stuff (snacky stuff, not real food). It's like shopping in BULK and for free! Pretty fun, actually. :) How ironic that they had a "Cosco" truck there.

Chef Fuzzy
Making pasta! He had just come back from flying -- you can still see the red imprint on his face from the helmet! That's dedication...

Expeditionary Pasta
I can't remember what this type is called, but it wasn't too bad!

Danish Cafe
After the British DFAC, we went to the Danish Cafe for a drink (non-alcoholic, of course) and relaxed. Not bad! Those Danes really know how to live. :) If only I were in shorts and a t-shirt, like at home...

Yummy Pies
We made mini pies with graham cracker crusts and pudding centers. Good practice for the awesome pies on Father's Day!

Boys being girls
A couple of the crew chiefs posing with some of the morale items someone sent.

Yet another puzzle
Still fun ways to pass the time :)

The garden!
We have little tomatoes! They taste horrible, but look cute. I'm pretty sure they're not intended for eating. There are a bunch of them on there! I think that's Maggie's gnome.

The other garden
With flowers! Since this pic, 2 other stalks have opened flowers! Pretty!

Last puzzle!
After finishing this one, it means it's time to go home!

Comments

[Mom]

Great blog
Loved the pix. Great ingenuity out there. Glad you're coming home soon. Love you.

[anonymous]

I'm always amazed at how you can create a really interesting blog by detailing how stifled & bored you are! Your patience, endurance & creativity are astounding. So glad you're in the home stretch! Can't wait to read your next blog & I can't wait to see & hug you!