Well, we had our Field Exercise in February. For those of you that don't know what it means to "Go to the field" I'll break it down for you. Going to the field means that you're going to go to a location other than your garrison and do a lot of training. You sleep in a tent, or on the ground....you shit in a port-a-potty, or you dig a hole....and you usually eat MRE's. That's army for "Meal Ready to Eat" also commonly known as "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians". I actually don't mind the occasional MRE. You always hope for the one with Skittles or M&M's in it or the Jalepeno cheese...well, I do anyway.
So, about a week before we go to the field, I always get an email from the Battalion Commander, the Lieutenant Colonel. It's the "Stay Back Roster" that he's received from the 1SG's and it basically has soldiers that claim they have a medical reason not to go to the field. So, it sucks for me because I have to call each soldier into my office, evaluate their profile, talk to them, talk to the other doc that wrote their profile and figure out if this person can really go to the field or not. So, the soldier either ends up hating me or loving me, depending on my action, which by the way, is closely scrutinized by the Lieutenant Colonel, who happens to be my Senior Rater who says that every soldier "WILL" go to the field. It's a pain in the ass.
Okay, so the day we're going to go to the field, an alert goes off at 0400 that's heard all over the post. It's a shrill shriek...a siren that would be used in the event that North Korea decided to attack us. So, we climb out of our warm, comfy beds, put on all our gear, go to the arms room and draw our weapons then head to the motor pool to load up all our stuff. Then we do everything that we'd have to do in order to roll out the gate in 6 hours, but here's the funny thing. We have an agreement with the Korean Government that we won't moved tracked vehicles on their roads before 8pm. And since we're an MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit, we have big ass rocket launchers on Tank Tracks so we can't move out. So....we do all that stuff, then drive around the post and head back to the motor pool to show that we "could" move out if we had to before having a PAUSEEX (Pause Exercise). At this time, we're supposed to go back to our rooms and sleep or rest, but we never do because we watch movies, or order pizza or do all those other things that we know we'll be denied for a couple weeks.
Here we are doing our early roll out, showing that we could meet the time if we had to...this is an "88" and it's badass. Basically a tow truck for tracked vehicles. Even without the .50 Caliber Machine Gun mounted on it, it would do some damage to anything in it's way.
Here's me and Private Ussery, in the motor pool, ready to move out.
I'm not sure if this will work in the blog, but it's a video where I'm telling you that we're ready to go...
http://s110.photobucket.com/albums/n104/mightylad/February%202007%20LFX/?action=view¤t=MOV00618.flv
We finally got out to the training area and set up all our stuff. Here we are appreciating a little bit of downtime to get some rest.
I finally got my first patient. This guy ended up having an abscess behind one of his wisdom teeth and had to get the tooth removed. I sent him back to Camp Casey to see the Dentist.
After a couple days in the field, I needed to wash my hair...shampooing up was the easy part, finding a volunteer to poor water on my head was another story though. Nobody wanted to do it because they said that would "be gay". I had to pull rank to finally get a decent rinse! :)
Here's a couple group shots of us when we were at "Rooster 8", the airfield that we occupied.
This is Private Austria. He's not in my unit, he's from the 702nd Support Battalion, but he volunteered to come to the field so he could get some good training. This guy turned out to be an awesome soldier and just kept eating up everything I taught him. I showed him how to do some simple sutures and he kept going non stop. I think he must have done over a hundred sutures. He was eventually rewarded with suturing a real patient in front of one of my own new medics, just because of his dedication.
Here's Specialist Young and Specialist Ussery practicing putting on tourniquets to stop critical arterial bleeding.
Day 5 or 6, I don't remember. But it was pseudo-shower time again. This time I got a little scared as people were volunteering to rinse my hair and getting a little "TOO" close...
Austria was getting a little too involved here....
A little down time....a good soldier sleeps when they can...
Doesn't that look comfortable?
Private Ussery, getting ready to remove a toenail.
The medics had to pull gate guard duty for 3 hour shifts. Here's PFC Schenck manning the .50 Cal Machine Gun.
My ambulance...dirty. She had a couple fun run-ins with some mud puddles, but at heart, she's still a Hummer.
My Aid Station. Ready for a MASCAL (Mass Casualty) Exercise or real life mission. We had all the litters set up and the equipment in the tent was ready to go.
For almost a week, PFC Schenck was begging me to do a Venous Cutdown on him so that the other medics could see how to do it. A venous cutdown is something that you do on somebody that you can't get normal IV access on. Basically, for those phlebotomist friends out there, if you can't get a vein to start an IV, then you make an incision with a scalpel over the vein, the break apart the subcutaneous tissue around it to expose the vein. Then you pull the vein up above the skin and insert the IV catheter. It's a pretty cool procedure, but when you're done, you have to suture the incision that you made. So....I finally agreed to do it, and here's the procedure.
Here I am considering...what the hell am I doing.
My assistant, Corporal Lash...gloving up...
Here's Schenck....probably regretting that he begged me to do this...
Prepping his arm with betadine and numbing up the area with lidocaine.
Setting up the sterile field and making the incision. Then breaking apart the subcutaneous tissue to expose the vein. Once the vein is exposed, I pull two lengths of suture material under the vein so I can tie off the proximal and distal ends once the catheter is inserted.
Here's the vein, finally exposed and ready to pass the sutures under before inserting the 18 GA catheter..
Major Mosakowski, the S3, came in. He always dreamed of being a doctor and I asked him if he wanted to put in some stitches. After the successful infusion of 1 Liter of Normal saline, I allowed him to put the 2 sutures in Schenck.
The group shot after it was all done.
Schenck..went from being the patient to being the provider. Here he is suturing up one of the mechanics after they hurt themselves.
My camera battery died after a couple days in the field, so we didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked. But all in all it was a great field problem and we had a good time. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!!!
