A blog/journal about my life and the stuff I like. Popular subjects include music, guitars, gear, books, movies, video games, technology, humor.
I found out from Aeyoung that her younger brother Song Yul had passed away after an accident. He was still very young and was taking care of her mother and the family farm since her father's death over ten years ago. He served his country, and was a very hard worker, a good father, son, and brother. I had known him for nearly twenty years and he was always a kind and supportive man. He will be greatly missed by his family in Korea and the United States.
We lost our civilian doctor, Dr. Rahullah who had been an integral part of our clinic here. He is on my left, explaining the patient’s prognosis to her father. He apparently was killed because of an inter-family rivalry although that isn’t confirmed. He was a man who had risen so far above his upbringing and spent seven years of his life in medical school and had been working in our clinic for less than a year. As unique as doctors are in the states, they are even more special here in Afghanistan. This is a typical outcome for those who put their lives on the line to help the people of Afghanistan.
but declines to throw it. Reports were widespread that an ultimatum from Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had resulted in Robert Plant relenting and agreeing to tour with Led Zeppelin next year. I bought it enough to tell my wife to plan for a trip or two and a new bank loan to pay for the tickets next year. Today I wake up to see a report that Robert Plant posted an announcement on his web page that he will not be touring, but wishes the other members well in their future endeavors. The rumors were that the band was auditioning another, younger singer to take Plant's place and that this is what motivated him to relent. Apparently, it isn't to be. If Zeppelin does tour with a different singer, I'll probably still go see them. After all, it will still be Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones with John Bonham's son and they will play a pretty solid setlist if they repeat what they performed at the O2 show.
I have to wonder if Plant or other parties will sue the band if they try to tour under the Zeppelin name. Whatever they call it, I'll still be motivated to see them. I last saw Jimmy Page when he was with the Firm in 84-85. I saw them before they had a name at the British Invasion tour show in Dallas, and then again a year later as the Firm. It was a decent show, but not Zeppelin. Jimmy did play a very drunken instrumental version of Stairway at the first show and I was close enough to jump up and touch his doubleneck (his guitar, you pervs) although I also declined. Paul Rodgers is good with Bad Company, and I really like what he has done with Queen but he didn't really gel with Jimmy Page back then. I'll be very happy if they can get someone with Robert's old vocal range and play the songs like they were played back in Zeppelin's heyday.
I just saw on the news that Richard Wright, keyboardist of Pink Floyd has passed away from cancer at the age of 65. Richard Wright was often overlooked but a critical member of the band whose input was important on all the landmark Pink Floyd albums. Lately he had been a prominent member of David Gilmour's band and touring group and was featured prominently on the video for the "On an Island" tour. The chance for a real Pink Floyd reunion is now permanently gone, although it was very unlikely with Gilmour's motivation to reunite. Richard Wright will be missed.
or are you just happy to see me? A couple of action shots of a guy who had what was apparently a shrapnel wound to his posterior thorax that resulted in a hemopneumothorax (blood and air in the chest cavity, compressing the lung). We started an IV, gave him some pain meds & antibiotics, and I placed the chest tube seen here. We evacuated him to our forward surgical team and he's doing well according to reports. Yeah, I don't exactly look professional in that first shot, but we tend to joke around a lot during traumas, especially after we have stabilized the patient and know that they're going to do alright.
I had assisted with a few of these during PA school, but this was the first trauma patient that actually needed a chest tube that I put in myself. During OIF 1 we just never got anyone with penetrating chest trauma that really needed a chest tube. It's surprising just how hard you actually have to push to penetrate the pleural lining, but it's very obvious once you do. After penetrating and opening the hole up with hemostats there is a great rush of air (in the case of a pneumothorax) and blood (if there's a hemothorax as well) and the patient usually immediately begins to breathe easier, which this one did. That also explains the last picture (I probably needed a face shield). I'm sure I'll get several more under my belt before I'm done here.
The vacant stare and protruding tongue are products of Ketamine, an anesthetic agent that works very well for short procedures. We have to use it fairly often for young children because they get so distressed by the environment and the procedures we perform here. We use local anesthetics first, but they usually still get very upset by the process so we often sedate them. These kids get what I call the "Ketamine Stare" where they lay with their eyes open staring, but they are unaware of what's going on. I put on a little Pink Floyd first and with the Ketamine onboard, send them to the Dark Side of the Moon.
It's now September, so another calendar month is gone by. August was a fairly good month in retrospect. I left Jalalabad on August 6th and came to FOB Blessing which has turned out to be a positive change in most aspects. I'm pretty happy with the living arrangements, and I have settled into a comfortable routine here.
In the last month I have seen more serious trauma than I saw during my whole OIF deployment. That statement must be qualified by the fact that we didn't have a steady supply of local nationals that we were seeing and Iraq hadn't really heated up yet during my time there. After four years in Occupational Medicine I was feeling pretty rusty on trauma management, but just a few weeks here can knock a lot of rust off. Yesterday, I placed a chest tube in a local national that was hit by shrapnel and then we evacuated him to Jalalabad for further care.
Things to look forward to in the next month include the completion (hopefully) of the new dining facility which will result in the relocation of the MWR facility to the former mess hall area (which will allow more room) and possibly a small PX being put into the previous MWR facility. September and October are still fairly busy from an operational standpoint, so we will probably continue to get a steady flow of trauma patients.
Just a follow up post on our favorite freezer bag wearing local national. Or should I say, local ninjanal. Here he is getting his sutures removed, obviously in great distress and in fear for his life. I wish all kids were like this.
Here's a closeup of his laceration, well healed after about 8 days.
Some assorted views about the camp. The first is the view out the back porch of the aid station. The area below is a volleyball court and the wall is the perimeter for the main camp area. Outside the wall is the small flight line where helicopters land and they store fuel and other supplies.
The second picture is the of the little shop and ANA (Afghan National Army) meeting room which is adjacent to our front door. The shop sells mostly copies of movies and music and assorted electronics. I hear he can get about anything you ask for if you give him a couple of days. So far I haven't broken down and bought any movies (they're 2$), as we have plenty to watch on our computers and in the aid station.
The third picture is of my living area. Narrow to be sure, but it's actually pretty functional. The nicest thing about it is it's my own private area and it's part of a room I share with our doctor and platoon leader (both of whom are very good neighbors so it's nice and peaceful). I have my little sitting area and a place I can play guitar, use my computer, etc. at floor level. My bunk is up high and I've got a small light for bedtime reading. There are plans in the works to get the local carpenter to build a desk in the back (where the 4 drawer chest is located) and build a frame to keep the bunk up high. Our platoon leader already has this setup, so we should get it eventually but we have to wait for other higher priority projects to get completed.
The last picture is of yours truly during one of those deployment highlights, the opening of a package from home. Aeyoung sent a bunch of candy and school supplies for the local kids, but she didn't forget about me and included a lot of nice toiletries (awesome towels) and some music and game magazines as well as snacks. Everyone looks forward to the resupply flights that come about every four days in the hopes of getting mail from home.
or ninjas, or firewalkers, or whatever other badass pain insensate icon you can compare to these kids. Here’s a couple more of our stalwart local patients.
The little boy with the interesting headgear and gator (it was raining and we needed to keep the dressing dry) was hit on the top of the head with an axe, according to the story we got. Luckily, it must have been a very lightweight axe as it only penetrated the skin and didn’t reach the bone. He was completely lucid and not showing any neurological defects during the hour he was with us. I threw some stitches in and off he went. He got the gator because he sat there as stoic as a supreme court judge the whole time without complaining or moving. Yeah, these kids are tough. We still get the occasional hysterical screaming kid, but we get more of these kids with zen like patience and bearing.
The little girl behind the old man lost her right eye and suffered shrapnel wounds to her face and leg. I treated and stabilized her initially and then we evacuated her to the forward surgical team where she stayed for a few days. She is on a list to get a replacement eye prosthetic (glass, I think) which will probably be performed in Kabul when it eventually happens. She was another monk like patient; she cried a little bit but otherwise didn’t squirm or fidget during the whole process of cleaning up her wounds and bandaging them. Normally we would have sedated her, but since she had head trauma, we couldn’t give her anything that would cloud her clinical picture.
She’s too young to realize the magnitude of her loss, but the day this picture was taken (about 10 days after the event) she was smiling and playing with her sister and responding to me when I talked to her.
These children in Afghanistan have a very hard life by any standard, especially by Western standards. Almost daily we are seeing children with significant burns, blunt and penetrating trauma, or infections that have progressed much farther than they would in the US. This little girl is about 3 years old and she was burnt when she apparently knocked over a boiling tea kettle. She was brought in about 12 hours after it happened. We sedated her and cleaned up her burn and dressed it. We arranged for her transfer to a burn center in Kabul and she flew out yesterday. She'll probably do okay in the long run, but it's hard to see these kids going through all the suffering they do when some simple safety measures could prevent these accidents.
and she’s not even here. Aeyoung sent a big package that I received yesterday and it had quite an assortment of candy and snacks that she asked me to give to the children that come into our clinic. As the picture below proves, she’s now held in high regard by the locals. The jury is still out on me since I usually am approaching them wearing gloves and carrying syringes and scalpels. It’s amazing how comparable a tootsie pop is to fentanyl.
Here are some more pics. The first is a view from our flagpoles out into the Korengal valley below. The second picture is of our trauma treatment room. The third is a little girl who suffered arm and hand burns after turning over a pot of boiling liquid.
This is a picture of the front door to the aid station at Camp Blessing.
I’ve been in Afghanistan for about five weeks now, the last two at a new base with a different battalion after one of my peers had to be replaced. I was moved to one of the infantry battalions at Camp Blessing, which is in a more remote and contentious area in A-stan. I actually find the life here much preferable to the last place I was at (Jalalabad). The weather here is a bit cooler, the aid station we occupy is a permanent cement structure that keeps the temperature cooler and more stable around the clock, and everything that I would need to do is within about 300 meters walking distance (aid station, dining facility, gym, laundry, bathroom). We see mostly local national children here and we get to do surgical procedures mostly on a daily basis. Lots of abscesses and skin infections with the occasional trauma thrown in. In the two weeks I have been here, we have had two mascals (more patients than we can treat at one time) although in both cases there were only two “serious” patients so both the doc and myself were able to manage them within our scope. We’ve intubated four patients, and put in four chest tubes (one guy got two). We’ve seen everything from shrapnel, to GSW (gunshot wounds) to MVAs (motor vehicle accidents).
We also see alot of kids with burns and other questionable blunt trauma injuries. It’s not uncommon for children here to be running around open fires with cookpots full of boiling water and other dangerous substances. Safety practices are essentially non existent so we see alot of stuff you wouldn’t see in the states. Personal hygiene is also not a priority here so we see alot of infections that wouldn’t normally occur in the US. I wouldn’t have thought it, but I find the work here quite agreeable. I normally prefer the steadiness of occupational medicine but there is definitely a different vibe to seeing people with true objective illness and injury as opposed to the typical sick call patient we see in the US. When you see a 6 month old kid with an eyelid full of pus the size of a golfball, it’s not even a question as to whether or not they deserve your attention. So many of the problems here are correctable with an intervention or two so it’s much more satisfying when you treat them and then see them get better. And they are almost universally appreciative for the help.
This is opposed to the typical soldier on sick call who has some sort of minor musculoskeletal issue that will only get better with time and a small amount of effort/common sense on the soldier’s part (which is often lacking). There are plans to get a new PA to replace the one that left and theoretically that would mean I get sent back where I was, but I am beginning to think it would be better to remain here. The work is real, the living is better, and time is going by faster while I’m here. Time will tell.
are now gone by. I am currently in Jalalabad, Afghanistan working out of a consolidated treatment facility colocated with a forward surgical team. We have moved two different times already, and are due to move again when they finish building new housing and a clinic. That’s due to happen in Sep/Oct but I will probably miss it as I am getting ready to backfill for a provider from an infantry unit that is being sent back to the states. Hopefully I will still have connectivity where I’m going, but I won’t know until I get there. I intend to upload some photos and video when I get the chance.
I type this post from a MWR (Morale, Welfare, Recreation) center on Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. I’ve been in country a few days after a 22 hour journey from Texas. We’ve been staying in tents and going through some required inprocessing and training. We are due to depart for our permanent(ish) home for the next 15 months later today. Right now things are really heating up in Afghanistan as they cool down in Iraq. Just two days ago there was an insurgent raid of Taliban and other foreign soldiers on a small outpost (this is all over the news, btw) which resulted in 9 American deaths and 15 American casualties. It’s the largest and deadliest attack on US forces in 3 years. We will be providing the medical care at the base where the 15 were evacuated to. They were stabilized and then evacuated onto a military hospital in theater. I’m still not sure how to feel about the way things are going. In some ways I am motivated to hopefully be part of taking the fight back to the enemy and making the Taliban and their allies pay for this attack. Right now I’m also mostly just wanting to get to our permanent home and to get settled into a routine. I’m still not sure exactly where my permanent home will be, and probably won’t know that for several days. And of course that can easily change as the mission changes. I will continue to update the blog with entries and later with photos once I can get full connectivity.
I leave for my extended sojourn in a few hours. It’s now nearing midnight on the 10th of July. I expect to be gone for 15 months, returning in October of 2009. I plan on regularly updating this blog when I get the chance, if I have connectivity. If I don’t, this may be the last post for a long time. I appreciate all expressions of support and prayer from those who gave them. I will be keeping in touch as best I can.
It's been nearly a month since I saw Rush in Houston and Austin on a Saturday and the following Wednesday (Apr 19/23rd). The delay is more work/life related on my part than a lack of desire to post a review. Both shows were great, and I won't post as detailed a review as from last August as the show was mostly the same with the exception of a few set list changes and a new video before the second set. I am probably in the minority of people who aren't as happy with the set list changes because I really was happy to hear Entre Nous and Circumstances as I had never heard them live before (and they are both great tunes). They decided to go back to a few classic staples since this second leg was hitting several cities that hadn't been on the tour itinerary in several years. The other deletions are Secret Touch and Distant Early Warning. I'm a big fan of Vapor Trails (and Snakes & Ladders) so I was also disappointed for them to remove Secret Touch.
I recently read Neil Peart's book "Ghost Rider" which took place in the interval between the death of his daughter & wife (both occurring within a year's span) and details how he rode his motorcycle for thousands of miles over the next few years as part of his recovery process. In the text of the book are many literary references, but the main focus of the book is sort of an autobiographical travelogue with intermittent flashes of his grieving process in the form of narrative as well as reprints of many letters he wrote during that time. Dispersed throughout the tome are several slices of what would eventually turn into the lyrics of the next album (VT). After reading it I gained a new appreciation for many of these songs (as well as his lyrics in general). Gives me a new level of disgust at the blogger who ranked him (Neil) as the second worst Rock lyricist of all time.
Here's the new setlist:
Setlist:
Video Intro (features all 3 band members)
Limelight
Digital Man
Ghost of a Chance
Mission
Freewill
The Main Monkey Business
The Larger Bowl (with McKenzie Brothers intro)
Red Barchetta
The Trees
Between The Wheels
Dreamline
Intermission
Video Intro (What's That Smell? features all 3 members, Jerry Stiller)
Far Cry
Workin' Them Angels
Armor And Sword
Spindrift
The Way The Wind Blows
Subdivisions
Natural Science
Witch Hunt
Malignant Narcissism
Drum Solo
Hope
The Spirit of Radio
2112: Overture / The Temples of Syrinx
Tom Sawyer (with South Park intro)
Encore:
One Little Victory
A Passage to Bangkok
YYZ
Video Outro (Alex, Neil, Jerry Stiller)
It was great to see them, especially in Austin. They played the Frank Erwin Center in the theatre setup which seats about 8000 total. The acoustics and the intimacy of the indoor environment allowed for a perfect live setting. I think it will be better to space the shows apart because the novelty did wear a little bit since it had only been 5 days between shows. I think the perfect schedule would be to see them about three times per tour with at least a month between shows. I would also try and see them in as different an environment as possible. I think for the next tour (I feel like they have at least another album/tour in them) I will try to see them somewhere like Red Rocks or The Gorge in Washington, Vegas, and somewhere in Texas.
