Today is the final Sunday I will spend with my family prior to deployment. I attended my early meeting (PEC) at 0730, and went home to roust the kids for a brief moment before returning to church for Sacrament Meeting at 0900. Turns out, they did not need any rousting. Drew had already come to church with her mom, so that she could practice her piano solo, which she will be performing during Sacrament Meeting today. Maddy and Maya were already in the car (Maddy’s) when I pulled into the driveway. So I quickly gathered my things, and headed back out the door.

In church, I was asked to say a few words prior to the first speaker. We then heard from the Fillmores, and Drew played her own arrangement of “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing” (beautiful!) in between talks.

It’s funny how, when we are running out of something good, be it food, hot water, or (as in this case) time, every little bit that we have seems so appreciated, almost sacred. That is how I feel now, as I spend my last few days with my family and friends, all of whom I love and will miss dearly when I go. But, honestly, there are other things which I will miss too. My comfy bed, for instance, or our cupboard full of food, fast wireless internet, having a car readily available (and interesting places to go to).

There is still much packing and preparation which I need to do prior to heading out, but for today, the Lord’s Sabbath, I am mostly just going to take a moment and enjoy, gratefully, those people and things which currently surround me and make my life so consistently good, and meaningful.

…or SRP, as we Army types call it, was brief and mostly painless. This is the processing that we do prior to leaving our home station (in my case, Fort Gordon), and for me, it started on 12 Feb. I checked into the orientation, had to get myself entered into the DARTS system, which as far as I can tell is a method of tracking the important details of deployed personell. Then I was given that All-Important Army Tool: the “signed checklist” which is simply a piece of paper with  the different things I need to do/places to go, and with a blank square next to each one, which has to be stamped, signed, or initialed by someone at that particular station. Everyone in the Army has filled out a lot of these in their lifetime.

My particular list had me traveling to places like the Connelly Clinic, the hospital, JAG office, ID card section, and so on. Many of the stations (especially the medical)were dependent upon having completed other stations, and often, station #1 was not open except on Thursday from 9 to noon, thereby blocking completion of stations 2, 3, and 4 until after that time. Due to these potential conflicts, we are told that SRP should take about 10 days, but I was highly motivated and completed it in 4 days (though with a little help from my doctor/nurse friends who helped me get EKG, CXR, labs, etc). Nice to get that last box on the checklist signed, which took place on Friday 15 Feb. Today (19 Feb), I got a call from the 1SGT telling me that my orders were ready.

 T-minus 18 days, and here’s what’s on my mind.

 When a soldier tells someone that he/she is going to Iraq, the response generally seems to fall into one of four categories:

1) THE “OVERWHELMING SYMPATHY” RESPONSE, in which the other party looks at the deployee as if he has just revealed a diagnosis of terminal cancer. This is, in my experience, the most common response, and clearly comes from a special place in the heart of a good person. Often the domain of mothers, grandparents, and many other kindly, caring folk. It frequently leads to awkwardness from those who may have previously been friendly with the deployee, but now are just not sure what to say.

2) THE DENIAL RESPONSE, a kind of uneasy, tentative “that’s no big deal, right?” kind of vibe. Usually comes from the deployee’s loved ones–those who cannot bear the thought of hearing that name on the local news a few months down the road. Again, often leads to some awkwardness and uneasy silences. Notably, this has (mostly) been my own response to the news that I would be going.

3) THE “BIG WHOOP” RESPONSE, a tepid “so what?” type of reaction, usually from someone who has already done their time in the sand, often  two or three times over. Pretty well-justified in these folks, and, to be perfectly honest, of #1 through #3, I find this response the easiest to deal with–not much required on my end (except to shutup already).

But there is, I believe, a better way:

4) THE “HEALTHY, WELL-ADAPTED” RESPONSE has come from about one-third of the people I’ve been in contact with, and goes something like this:

ME: blah blah blah Iraq blah blah rupard.org blah blah
HEALTHY, WELL-ADAPTED LISTENER: I’m sorry to hear that you are going; we’re going to miss you around here while you are gone. Is there anything I can do to help you out?
ME: No, but it is nice of you to ask.
H.W-A.L.: Well, I will keep you in my prayers.

You can also cut out the offer for assistance in the above example–not at all essential. The simple act of  acknowledging the deployee’s circumstance goes a long way, at least for me. In fact, I think this principle applies pretty broadly to bad news, including the aforementioned cancer diagnosis. Most of us don’t want people to feel sorry for us; everyone has their “bag of troubles” and I truly would not want anyone fretting over my admittedly puny portion of  the world’s hardship. But it’s always nice  to hear the sincere, well-wishing words of others, and any prayer offered on my behalf will always be gratefully accepted by me.

One last note: my intention here is to comment on a phenomenon I have noted, rather than to tell people how to behave around me for the next few weeks. In reality, none of the above four responses are bothersome to me (though if I were a resident of Berkeley, California, I might have experienced a response #5, which may not have been as pleasant). All of the above reactions are good-hearted, and I am a firm believer that good intentions pave the road to heaven at least as much as the highway to that other place.

. . . but I have to, so I am now officially making time, sitting here at work, stopping 5 minutes to have some excellent soup made by Maria, and writing what I can before someone (else) knocks on my door.

Three short weeks from today, I will be on a plane to Iraq. I am completing my final week in clinic, though I will be here intermittently next week to do a few clinical things and a lot of non-clinical ones. Today was supposed to be non-clinical–I was supposed to have time to take care of the approximately 1762 things I need to do before deploying, but instead, I ended up looking through a microscope at the bone marrow of an unfortunate patient who I biopsied yesterday, and seeing things I did not like. The pathologists confirmed to me that I was right not to like them (this was not a tough call), and that the patient has relapsed leukemia. So, my morning has been filled with the consequences of this unfortunate finding, including breaking the bad news to patient and family, crying with them for an all-too-brief moment, arranging for movement to a facility that can do the appropriate next step, and running around to see all of my other patients in between all of the above.

This is not a daily occurrence in my clinic, but lately it has been a few times per week, which sort of throws the rest of my activities down on the triage list, and puts me behind. Blogging ends up fairly low on that list, just slightly above playing tennis on the Wii. (Ah, I take that back, it’s below Wii tennis also.)

So on the Iraq front, here’s the dilly: I will be going initially to base #1. My date of departure has changed twice in the past week, from 01 March to 08 March, and back again to 01 March. These changes are an annoyance, since I have had to subsequently change my family plans immediately pre-deployment a couple of times, but they are typical Army hoo-hah and I long ago stopped attempting to “kick against the pricks” and just accepted that the Army does not and will not always do the sensible, logical or rational thing. I met with a friend earlier today who is leaving tomorrow, and he will be keeping me apprised of how goes the pre-deployment CRC–”Combat Readiness Course” to some, but I think it really stands for “CONUS Replacement Center.” (Only the acronymophilic Army would have an acronym, the first word of which is itself an acronym.)

Oops, somebody’s knocking, be right back…

The first in a series. Eventually, I’d like to upload a few mixtapes (discs, actually, with about 80 minutes of music) with themes like “So You Think You Hate Country Music?” and “Great Songs You’ve Never Heard,” etc. But first:

A great band with a terrible name (after a DNA song), Blonde Redhead has perfected the layered guitar sound I love so much (Italian twin brothers Amadeo and Simone Pace), and added to it something distinctly different: the wispy, dream-like voice of Japanese art student Kazu Makino. It is impossible to describe this voice (which is also multi-tracked and layered), but it floats above the modest heaviness of the backing track. Kazu has seen some sad times (she was trampled by a horse two albums ago, nearly lost her life, did have a bunch of broken bones, wired jaw), and her voice, even in the happy songs, soungs distant and longing.

The song I’ve got for you is “23″ from their latest album of the same name. The groove is in full effect here around the time that you hear the wispy voice singing “He was a friend of mine, son of God.” Of the noisier noises in the world, it probably doesn’t get any more beautiful than this. Enjoy.

Buy “23″

By the way: more Blonde Redhead, along with a bunch of other good stuff is at your beck and call (actually, probably just your “beck”) in the little blue box to your left, conveniently labeled “BOX.” Have at it.

All of this falls into the “rumor mill” category, but here goes:

I have mentioned in a prior post that my eventual location in Iraq is currently up in the air. That remains true and perhaps even more so. Word is going around that some shifts are taking place, which are moving some doctors out of certain areas which are seeing less action, and into posts which are busier. This, of course, makes perfect sense, but is not always how things have worked in the Army (surprise!). It is almost universal among military physicians that we would rather be deployed to an area where we are actually helping real soldiers, than to be deployed in an area in which we are not needed (even if the quality of life there is more comfortable).

In short, when I’m in a plane many months from now, flying back over the Atlantic, towards my beloved home, I’d like to feel that I made a real, measurable (even if small) difference in improving the Iraqi situation.

More to follow…