Doing Surgery in "The Stan"

Time is starting to wind down here in "The Stan". "The Stan" is what everyone calls this place. One day, I will be telling my grandkids, "When I was in the Stan, we.....". We have had a few more patients here and there. It has been warmer the last few days. When it is warmer, the Taliban like to come out. We had a patient (local national) yesterday that about blew both of his hands off with some sort of explosive. We also had a local national that was hit by a car. This picture is of me teaching a couple of the Polish medical personnel how to insert a femoral central line. The commander of our FST (CPT Roelse) is a flight RN that actually attended CRNA school about ten years ago. We did a ventral hernia repair this morning on a contractor on our FOB. Since CPT Roelse was experienced in anesthesia and has helped me alot, I told him I would scrub and he could do the anesthesia. So, I scrubbed in and help repair a ventral hernia (with a lot of help from our surgeon, Greg). Here are a couple of pictures of that as well. That was really cool being on the "other" side of the drapes. It really does get hot under all of that garb! The last picture is of the Rescue Rosamak (Wolverine) and the Polish medical detachment. One of their Ortho surgeons was leaving to go home and they had a little going away ceremony for him. The Polish have been incredible to work with. I can speak conversational Polish now quite fluently. My replacement is in CRC Ft. Benning at present. If everything goes according to plan, he should arrive January 19-21. I should be in Kuwait by the 22nd and on a plane back to CRC Ft. Benning on the 23rd. It is hard to beleive that this is almost over. I can't tell everyone how much I have appreciated everything. The care packages have been great. I couldn't have made it without them. Well, that's all for now!