As The Sparks Fly Upward

Saturdays I have only half a clinic, which makes it a little less groundhoggy around here. After telling you on Wednesday night that our clinic had slowed to a trickle of sub-acute patients, things picked up again on Thursday with the proverbial vengeance, and did not let up through this morning. The cases were a fairly typical assortment of minor maladies, but there were a few departures from the norm.

One was a soldier who suddenly developed problems with rage, and stated that he “felt like he wanted to beat some of my co-workers to a bloody pulp.” Turned out that he is on a medication which can “unmask” underlying anger management issues. The culprit med is a steroid, for which he has a legitimate medical need; regardless, I can’t let a soldier with homicidal ideations walk around carrying an M16 and two clips of ammo. So he had to lose those, as well as his leatherman. Personally, if they took away my M9 pistol, I’d be a happy camper: one less thing to keep my eye on every second, and a bit less weight to carry around. The leatherman, I would miss, though. That individual went off to the combat stress folks, who will determine if and when he gets his weapon back. If he loses it permanently, he’ll be out of the Army soon thereafter.

Much of Thursday was taken up with a second interesting patient. A bit too interesting. I sent Lorri an e-mail about it as it was happening, some of which I’ll reproduce here:

Lorri-soup,

This has been an interesting morning already: the day of male and female problems. I have diagnosed two men with epididymitis (testicular inflammation) and one unfortunate 19-year old Private came into our clinic complaining of breasts enlarging, hair falling out, fatigue, and constipation. So what’s your diagnosis at this point?

I had two guesses: thyroid problems, or (much more likely) pregnancy. Unfortunately for her, the urine preg test came back positive, and she was escorted to the hospital, where confirmatory tests will be done. Then she will be shipped out of here, and will be subject to UCMJ action for unlawful sexual relations while deployed. She’s in the room crying as I write this.

–EJR

Whenever people see the pictures of Maddy, Drew, and Maya on my computer or elsewhere, I always get the same thing: “Sir, I do NOT envy you, having three beautiful young daughters.” Well, I’m here to tell you, that I envy me. I envy me very much. Good kids, those three. Of course, they aren’t done cooking quite yet, but so far, so good (I’d now be vigorously knocking on wood if there was any in this little plastic bunk-a-low).

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I received a package from Amazon dot com on Friday. I had just placed my first order with them on Monday, and was hugely impressed that my books (Baseball Prospectus, Thomas Sowell’s latest, and “Weightlifting For Dummies”) got here so quickly. When I opened up the package, I was amazed to see that my books were, in fact, not in this shipment. Instead, the box was full of three huge box sets, containing the entirety of the series “Deadwood.” From a prior e-mail conversation, I knew that these were sent by my great friend from high-school onward, Steve Anisman. Steve and I differ on quite a few issues (politics and religion, to name a couple), but we have always enjoyed the kind of relationship wherein we can discuss topics on which we greatly disagree, without either of us taking offense. That is really invaluable to me, and I have learned a lot about listening and arguing by talking to Steve (e.g., lesson #43: Respond to each valid point he makes by stating that it is “not unmeaningless”; this buys me some a bit of time to think while he sorts out the pluses and minuses).

Also, Steve and my tastes run pretty similar on topics of art, especially books and movies. So, though I have not seen a bit of Deadwood, and only know as much about it as the sealed box tells me, I’m gonna break it out tonight, and I bet I’ll like it. In fact, my entire unit (the 581st Area Support Medical Company) is getting in on the act: on cool nights, we have been popping some corn, setting up the hammock chairs, and gathering outside around CPT Baker’s massive-screen laptop, and watching whatever anybody’s got. This unit got here six months before I did, so they have exhausted a lot of movies, television series, etc, but only a couple have seen Deadwood (both of whom greatly endorsed it). So, looks like we’ve got the next month’s entertainment set.

Steve, I have no idea what untold gajillions you spent on this set of three full seasons, but I want you to know how appreciative I am; when you wrote to me, I thought you’d send me a couple of your own discs at a time, and I’d eventually make my way through the series. This is a truly generous gift, and I and my buddies out here sincerely thank you, and your family. We’ll talk soon.