My family of six joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1977 (December 31st, actually–those missionaries met their goals that month!). At the time, Spencer W. Kimball was the much-beloved prophet, with a raspy, Yoda-like voice, and a cheerful countenance all of the time. Ezra Taft Benson followed, and had a more stern style, but loving nonetheless. There was a brief period with Howard W. Hunter as our prophet (less than a year), and then President Gordon B. Hinckley became the prophet in March 1995, serving for 13 years, or nearly half of the time that the Rupard Family has been members of the church. He passed away last night, at around 7 PM.

President Hinckley was a remarkable man. Under his leadership, the Church made a smooth (even ahead-of-the-curve) transition to the 21st century and the “new media” which has so greatly enabled us to spread our message. He appeared numerous times on national television programs and as a result of these appearance, he became close friends with Mr. King and 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace. President Hinckley was a genuinely kind and charitable man, who managed to put even contentious people quickly at ease, without ever appearing “soft.”

Perhaps most significant to me personally, he bore more than a passing resemblance (both physically and in attributes of character) to a particular Grandpa who occasionally reads these pages.

He was beloved by members and non-members alike, and he will be missed.

So, the Park City trip was fun, the conference was informative, the Utah skiing was incredible (especially with Maya on the last day), and the Sundance film festival was a unique experience which will remain with me for a long time.

Back in Georgia now, and I have received some not-so-great news about my deployment. (Before I get too far into this, let me state that Army regs do not allow me to state specific locations on this site, so if I sound vague below, it is intentional.)

I was originally slated to deploy to a nice base which has fairly good standard of living (hereafter, “Base #1″). I am filling the second half of a particular deployment position (a “tasking”), and the doctor who is serving the first half has kept in touch with me throughout his deployment, and has enjoyed Base #1 quite a bit, and has felt safe, reasonably comfortable, and (possibly most importantly), has had good internet access. I cite internet access as important above all else, without the least amount of facetiousness. It seems to me that internet access, and all that it affords (connection with family via e-mail, webcam, websites/blogs, etc; entertainment; education) is the great material quality-of-life improvement that has taken place since the last U.S. war (Desert Storm, a.k.a. Gulf War I).

Just before I left for Park City, I got word that due to vagaries of rank, I may end up with the company in a higher-ranking position, but on a base (”#2″) which is not nearly as desirable. Specifically, there is more action, more dust, and less internet access at Base #2.

Regardless, I have no right to complain, as this will be my first tour in Iraq (as opposed to most of my non-medical military friends, who have already gone more than once). Also, my accommodations are almost certainly going to be better than the great majority of soldiers who have or will serve in this war.

But still, I sure hope I end up at Base #1.

If you have a last name that is not “Rupard,” you probably don’t need to read this, but for the technologically challenged among my vast readership, here is how a blog (short for “weblog”) works.

1) I write.
2) You write.

The longer version: every so often (hour? day? week?) I write something, usually about Iraq, music, the family, or this blog itself. This is called a “post.” So, when you check the rupard.org page, you will occasionally find something new there. You, then, have the opportunity to respond (if you’d like) by clicking the “comments” link at the bottom of each post. Your comments will appear immediately (after you click “submit comment”) and will then be a permanent part of the site.

The sidebar at the right will let you navigate to different areas of the site, and the calendar will enable you to see my post(s) for a certain day. Finally, if you only want to see the Iraq posts and don’t care what my opinion is on the latest Shins album, then just click the Iraq link, and you will be immediately gratified. This is the so-called “interactivity” that all the kids are raving about these days.

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Strong as my desire is to spare you the David Copperfield crap, I see that it’s probably necessary to provide some background information about how I ended up in the unlikely position of “combat oncologist.” And what better place to do that than in this, Blog Entry Number One.

It all started when I walked out of the LSAT (Law School Admission Test) in the fall of 1991. That will be a story for another day/blog entry, but suffice it to say that after years of planning to be an attorney, I had an epiphany (actually, a “stupor of thought“) at a fairly inopportune moment and suddenly knew that I would not be—nay, could not be—a lawyer. I called my sweet (though understandably concerned) wife Lorri, who picked me up in the same spot she had dropped me off 20 minutes earlier, and we were back to the drawing board.

One Christmas vacation later, I was signing up for pre-med classes, with the plan to apply to start medical school in 1994. Skip forward a bit, fall of 1993, and I am swinging up the east coast, visiting Emory University, Georgetown, Dartmouth, and a funny little school with an emerging reputation, but an ungainly name: Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Less ungainly but more unattractive is the acronym “USUHS” (pronounced like “useless” without the “L”), a nickname hated by all concerned, but used by just about everyone anyway.

I applied for USUHS for exactly one reason: the application was free (as opposed to the $50 to $100 for nearly all other schools). The idea of going to a military medical school has one fatal flaw in my mind: I would have to be in the military to go there. I did not then (and do not now) see myself as a military person—in fact, even picturing myself in any of the uniforms seemed laughable to me back then. But as I learned more about the school, my mind became open ever-so-slightly, as it had a few undeniable advantages.

1. The Army would pay for my education. This was a big deal in an era where med student could easily rack up a quarter million in bills, and in which doctors were being paid less and less to practice.
2. For USUHS (and only USUHS-this did not apply to other military medical scholarships), the Army actually makes you a 2nd Lieutenant, and pays you the appropriate salary. Back in 1994, this was around $34,000, which doesn’t seem a like a lot now, but was certainly enough for my family of four to survive back then.
3. Finally, I had heard from many that the general cut-throated-ness that had existed to some degree in my pre-med classes, was ten times worse in many civilian med schools, especially the more prestigious ones. But everyone who seemed to know about these things (BYU’s pre-med advisor, other students who had friends at USUHS, even the Princeton Review) stated emphatically that this was NOT the case at USUHS-that the students there had a strong “team” concept and really got along together well.

So, as I ventured into the University, it was with an open mind. I was impressed with the campus (compact, efficient, clean, and pretty, on the same Navy base as the well-regarded National Naval Medical Center). While walking to my interviews, students randomly came up to me and told me how much they like it at USUHS, and there was a real genuineness about their enthusiasm. After my interviews, which were very much along the lines of “We’d love to have you here” rather than the “You’ll be lucky if we accept you” vibe of some of the other schools, I was pretty well convinced that I could tolerate this military thing. After I read one of the pamphlets they gave me which showed that military doctors can actually make a decent living (not millions, or even hundreds of thousands, but a “comfortable living,” as my dad would put it), I was sold.

Fast forward again:

• graduated from medical school 1998
• Internal Medicine Residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), 1998-2001 (during which I realized that my calling in life is to be a Hematologist-Oncologist (a.k.a. a “Heme-Oncker”, a specialist in disease of the blood and cancers)
• one year as staff at WRAMC
• three more years of fellowship training in Hematology-Oncology, again at the great Walter Reed AMC

Finally, at the tender age of 37, I was finally fully qualified to practice in my chosen specialty, and was PCS-ed (Army lingo for “transferred”) to Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center (DDEAMC), where I currently serve as a staff Hematologist-Oncologist. In 2006, the “taskings” (requests for deployment positions to be filled) started coming rapidly to our little hospital, and I am in the second wave of specialists and generalists who will be taking a middle-east vacation this year, scheduled to deploy to Iraq, starting 01 March 2008.

And that’s how I became a walk-on part in this particular war. If someone had told me twenty years ago that in 2008 I’d have … well, you know how that sentence ends.

Congrats if you read through this entire filibuster (even if you ARE my mom!). My plan is to continue writing somewhere between 3-5 times per week from now (6 weeks before my deployment) until I get back home (and possibly after that; we’ll see how it goes). Any comments you would like to make, you can do so my clicking below and just writing. Only the profane will be edited; all else is fair game.