Not in a great mood tonight, and I can’t entirely explain why. Read: time for a good old-fashioned rant. Sit back, dear reader, relax, and bask in my unmitigated irritability.

Our AFN has been down for going on four days now. This, of course, happened on a weekend where the Armed Forces Network broadcast the Yankees-Mets game (a rare opportunity to root against BOTH teams). At home, no TV is not such a big deal, as there are lots of other things to do, but here in Al Asad, our measly six channels are precious company. When I think about it, there are really only eight things that we actually do here: eat, drink, sleep, work, poop, pee, lift weights, and watch tube. That’s it. I want my AFN!

I cleaned my room this weekend, and even went to the considerable hassle of not only borrowing someone else’s vacuum to do my carpets, but also of borrowing my neighbor’s heavy-duty transformer, so that I would not kill my last remaining outlet. When I went to bed on Saturday night, my room felt clean for the first time in a long time. And then when I woke up this morning, as I was attempting to peel my sticky eyes open, I could smell that unmistakable chalky scent, and felt like someone had been banging erasers over my head all night. When I finally got my lids pried apart, I could see the Orange Glow Of Death through my windows, and I knew that I was doomed to a day of coughing, snorting, and unintentional guffawing. And, ask anyone who knows me, I don’t guffaw easily. Chortle, maybe; snicker, occasionally; hoot, sometimes; but guffaw? Rarely, if ever. And, my freshly-vacuumed carpet now has a slight orangish hue (except for the footprints).

Also on Saturday, I took my sheets in to be washed. This is a relatively rare occurrence for me, because I do not have an extra set of sheets, and thus for the 48-hour laundry turn-around time, I have to sleep directly on the pillow-top which Lorri sent me many moons ago. So I went to pick up my beloved bedding today, along with three other bags of laundry which I dropped off at the same time. All of the laundry bags were ready for pickup except one. I’ll let you guess which…

On another note: I am giving a big Hematology presentation at the hospital tomorrow afternoon. It is just about ready to go, and looks pretty good, jokes and all. Gonna put some finishing touches on that now, so will check out for the moment.

You might be a deployed soldier if:

-You have recently dusted your refrigerator. The inside of your refrigerator.
-You feel guilty that you only worked out twice today.
-Every item of footwear in your possession is made of brown suede.
-You frequently get up at 4 AM to watch live sporting events.
-You don’t know the first names of any of your co-workers.
-You occasionally don’t know the sex of your co-workers.
-The person making your Subway sandwich laughs when you ask for tomatoes.
-You drank 2 liters of water in the past three hours.
-You have a favorite flavor of Crystal Light.
-Your favorite “mall” is actually a tent.
-In the past month, you have not gone beyond a 1-mile radius of your bedroom.
-You frequently conjugate the word “Skype.”
-The most fuel-efficient vehicle in which you have ridden lately is a Hummer.
-Ounce-for-ounce, you consume more ibuprofen than carbohydrates.
-That guy on your ID card looks a bit like you, but 40 pounds heavier.
-You have recently taken a “shower” with nothing but baby wipes.
-You own 17 pairs of prescription sunglasses.
-You can say the phrase “more bacon, please” in perfect arabic.
-Today you accidentally “slept in” until 0445.
-You know 5000 jokes about Chuck Norris.
-You actually like Chuck Norris.
-You can quote lines from five different gladiator movies.
-In making decisions, you frequently ask yourself “What would Jack Bauer do?”
-Your preacher carries a 9-mm.
-You never raise your thermostat above “18.”
-You consider cheese-flavored microwave popcorn a two-course meal.
-You are beginning to see the artistic value in rap music.
-When you sneeze, orange dust comes out.

Well, kids, another week has flown right by, and the clock on my Vista sidebar tells me that I have a mere 57 days left in The Brown Zone. Hard to believe—it seems like just a few weeks ago that that number was at 176 days.

Life continues to ramble on here for our little company of soldiers. Tomorrow our outgoing company commander CPT Allen comes to visit us and introduce us to the incoming commander, who takes over as Allen completes his tour. The news of this visit led to a flurry of activity, scrubbing floors, cleaning canisters, double-checking the expiry dates on all of the pharmacy items (all okay!) and generally getting spiffed-up for this visit.

The clinic was inordinately dead this week, until today when things finally picked up. I don’t mind a little “down-time” which gives me a chance to read up a bit on oncology, etc, but when we have a few days in-a-row in which the medics are sitting around the computer table, deliberately annoying each other out of sheer boredom, it gets a bit old. I am beginning to wonder if the very hot weather which has come on with the commencement of summer is the culprit here. If so, will the next couple of months be equally uneventful in the clinic? If this gets to be a pattern, we will start a series of lectures, to keep the medics learning and the docs exercising our not-yet-Alzheimered noggins.

We had an interesting little controversy this week, as my previously-mentioned good friend Barney, the big purple Chevy truck, developed a nice vertical gash in his bumper. (That’s right: we had the truck for all of a week, less than 500 kilometers and already a maimed bumper. This is why we can’t have nice things…) The kicker to this was that the offending driver of said Barnified vehicle, whomever he/she might have been, has not yet owned up to their mistake, which has left our administrative officer 1LT Coleman in an understandably foul mood.

In fact, when the fender-bender was announced to the soldiers (along with the new, onerous rules for checking out and logging in the vehicle), 1LT Coleman got an earful from the lower enlisted about how the car may have actually been hit while parked, and perhaps none of the TMC staff were to blame. This is a good theory, except that the dent in the bumper is, to any reasonable inspector, that of backing into a pole or some similar vertical object. When the medics inspected the damage for themselves, many of them still insisted (and even developed elaborate theories) that something had hit the truck rather than the other way around. 1LT Coleman started to wonder if they were right, but SFC Langer and I held fast–one glance at the bumper and it was obvious. But since the doubt had been cast, I made a mental note to look around the parking area at the cans (not really a parking area at all—just some rocks outside of the barriers) and see if I could find the point of impact.

When I got home from work that day, it took all of two minutes to find the very light pole which had been hit, replete with purple paint and a fresh-appearing (read: not yet dusty) flesh wound scraping beyond the outer, dull-appearing galvanized metal, into a more sparkly layer below. Voila! My scar! Who needs NCIS, when we have amateur crime scene investigator, MAJ Erik Rupard, on the job? No one, that’s who! (Still no perp though. Might have to get David Caruso to cross-examine each of us.)

By the way, for those of you who are (rightly) concerned: Casper, the white trailblazer, is alive, well, and undented. And Barney, though bloodied a bit, remains unbowed, and has a (mostly) dent-free bumper thanks to SPC Hert and his handy mallet.

[opens brain and drops contents out onto a piece of paper]

Jelly Bellies

Way back in March, anonymous good guy “A.G. Family” sent me (among many other things) a big 4-lb bag of Jelly Bellies. This kept me and the various other occupants of my office (a nurse practitioner, a physician’s assistant, and every medic in my clinic) happily sweetened throughout the afternoons. (Okay, occasionally the mornings too.) At four CPB (Calories Per Belly), they are an affordable luxury, even for the weight-obsessed people who make up the U.S. Army (remember: soldiers’ next promotion often depends upon what that scale reads). I recently finished off that bag. Actually, that’s not quite true: there are about one-hundred “tiramisu” JBs left. If you want them, send me your address, as there are no takers in the clinic at this point.

So with bag #1 running out, Mom Rupard came through and sent me a massive Cylinder O’ Beans, which is gracing the little dresser next to my bed as I wite this. I cannot begin to express the inordinate amount of pleasure that popping int my mouth a couple of buttered popcorn, caramel apple, Dr Pepper, or most of the other 47 flavors of Jelly Bellies. Mmmm, high fructose corn syrup…

Running

I am beginning to (dare I say it?) enjoy running once again, for the first time since a relatively brief renaissance when I first joined the Army. I did six miles on Saturday, three on Monday, and 5.5 today. Still riding the bike, too. I’m gonna have to do a better job of hydrating myself, though, as I woke up this morning and didn’t even have to pee. Not a good sign. I think that we may need another “National Kidney Stone Awareness Month.”

Speaking Of Hydration

I was fortunate enough last night to be in/around the vicinity when the water people dropped off our latest pallet. I immediately dug way in, and grabbed a couple of 12-packs from the middle of the pallet (theoretically protected a bit more from the sun than the outside bottles), and did a little taste test. It tasted sweet and clean, with virtually none of that “aromatic polycarbon” aftertaste of which I am not a big fan. I can feel the mutated white blood cells in my marrow as they slowly normalize their tied-in-knots DNA strands.

Tennis

I have ended up reviving my love of tennis after watching it a bit here in Iraq. For reasons unknown to me, tennis is always ALWAYS on the Armed Forces Network. I have not met any enlisted person who has any interest in the sport (playing or watching) and very few officers. Army sports include, and are limited to, the following: weightlifting, football, weightlifting, basketball, running, and lifting weights. Not necessarily in that order.

With no racquet, no tennis balls, and no tennis courts in Iraq, I have resigned myself to the notion that I will not be playing any tennis until I get back to the states. When I watch on TV, I have noticed that I have an unconscious pattern which determines for whom I am rooting. It goes like this: whomever grunts the LEAST gets my vote. I’m thinking of applying this criteria to my presidential choice as well.

Ladies and Gents:

I hereby apologize for the “blog outage” over the extended weekend—partly a result of poor internet access (it went down last night just as I sat down to write) but mostly just due to lousy planning and a bit of procrastination on my part. Not a whole lot happened this weekend (good weather, no new casualties, clinic is running smoothly), but I did have a unique experience as the weekend began.

On Friday night, we had our “Family Home Evening” which was nice, as always. Our clinic now has two Chevy Trailblazers, including one which was originally white but is slowly turning “Al Asad Brown” (a lighter hue of burnt sienna—kind of a “toasted mango” if you will), and one which is huge and purple (I am not making that up), and which we have therefore named “Barney.” I like Barney the best because it (he?) has a sweet stereo. I was able to procure Barney for my FHE trip, and as I drove back home around 8:30 PM, I noticed that the white truck was parked outside the cans. I took this as a sign that none of my soldiers were in immediate need of transport, so I stopped for just a moment, grabbed the Pearl Jam discs that Tony Fadell sent me a few days back, and hopped back in the truck.

My destination was the “ridge.” I have explained before that Al Asad is located in a “bowl”-like indentation in the land of western Iraq, and beyond the oasis is the edge of the bowl, a ridge of land that forms the “rim” of the bowl. A few days previously, COL Gober had taken me and my bike up to an area of the ridge which I had not known was open to bikes. The ride was very scenic, and getting up on the rim there opened us up to a nice breeze; however, there is no pavement for much of the ride, and hence it is pretty bumpy. As we rode, I was too busy holding onto my handlebars and watching for potholes to enjoy the scenery. Having Barney available to me meant that I could go up there at night, off-road a bit, and check out the lay of the land at night time.

I made it up to the ridge and looked out over the base while listening to Tony’s music. Eventually, I turned off the tunes and got up out of the truck, walking into the 90-degree air (but with a nice balmy wind), and checked things out a bit. Because ambient light is restricted here at night time, the stars are more visible than most places back in the states. Leaning there against the hood of my purple friend for a moment, the place seemed incredibly quiet and peaceful. Had I been “beamed” from the past into that moment in my life, I would never have guessed that I was in a combat zone (though knowing what I know now, the dust/diesel smell is a dead giveaway). I ended up riding along much of the rim that night, enjoying the starry sky, and just observing the various strange little areas of industry which make up a United States military base.

All in all, a nice experience it was. I don’t want to start waxing poetic here (although I suppose that’s considerably better than waning poetic), but in closing I offer you this deep thought: Wouldn’t the world be a better, happier place if we all had a purple truck named Barney?

I usually end up writing my (sort-of) daily blog post right before I hit the sack, which is generally the most convenient time, as my days are spent in the clinic and the gym, and generally away from an internet-ready computer. Today, though, the clinic is pretty quiet (eight patients in the first three hours), so I am taking advantage of this time to jot down a few things that have passed through my brain this week.

One is the incredible resilience and innovation of the soldiers here in theater. The building which currently houses our clinic used to be a Turkish bath, and hence is not quite ideal for patient care. By hook or by crook, however, it has been modified to fit our purposes. Long before I arrived here, the medics had built desks out of irregular bits of plywood, put in makeshift doors where none previously existed, even built a fairly complex workout area in the triage area outside. Currently, they are making a basketball half-court in the driveway (though the first attempts at a makeshift rim have failed miserably). Last week, our front door got blown right off its hinges during one of the more vicious dust-storms. We were able to get it back on, but the spring-loaded mechanism which made it close automatically had been destroyed. SGT Evans immediately put pen to paper and came up with an alternative. The result is a simple pulley strung out and over the door, with a bucket full of nails hanging at the bottom, effectively accomplishing exactly what the spring did. Of course, when we get a replacement door mechanism, we’ll retire the pulley, but it is nice to have it now—keeps some of the dust out of the clinic, and stops the door from swinging wildly open every time someone walks into the clinic. The soldiers here have a “get it done” philosophy likely borne of necessity early in their tour (or on prior deployments) and perpetuated by a Department of Defense bureaucracy which make replacements for necessary item around here very slow in coming (if at all). Amazing what a bit of ingenuity can accomplish.

Second topic: [First a disclaimer: we at the TMC have approximately 1,000,000 drink mixes thanks in large part to many of the swell folks who read this blog. So the following is NOT an elaborate "hint" nor is it a "wish list." Just a silly commentary on something that we soldier-types spend a truly unfortunate amount of time pondering.] I believe that the soldiers in Iraq (and Probably Afghanistan as well) are probably the world’s experts on calorie-free drink mixes. We drink water constantly, and after the first liter or so every day, all of it starts to taste bad (especially the leukemia water, which tastes bad with the first sip and goes downhill from there). So each of us is constantly putting these powdered packets into our drinks. The standard flavors are lemon-lime, fruit punch, and lemonade (a.k.a. “green,” “red,” and “yellow,” respectively). But those of us who drink gallons of the stuff daily are always on the lookout for innovation. Barry and Ellen sent me about a thousand of these things, in a bunch of unusual and different flavors (white grape, raspberry ice, mixed berry, kiwi-strawberry, pure lemon, and a bunch of iced-tea combos). Others have come from other sources, or in general care packages from relief organizations. Occasionally, the DFAC will stock some of these, but they go quickly. A couple of the local favorites include the following:

1. Crystal Light “LiveActive” Natural Mixed Berry. This one has three grams of fiber in it, which is really helpful out here in the land of greasy food and blazing sun. Also, I think the fiber actually gives the drink some “body” (can’t believe I am using a term I think I learned from a 1970s Prell ad) which is often lacking from sugar-free drinks. Ellen sent me this one, and it is my all-time favorite.
2. Propel Kiwi-Strawberry “fit powder.” This is made by the Gatorade people, and I will confess here and now to being a consumer junkie for any/all of their products. The flavor is sweet, but not too sweet, and has a bit of a cotton-candy tinge to it, which helps to satisfy my sweet tooth a bit.
3. Country Time Lemonade. Can’t argue with a classic. This is the sugar-free variety.
4. Crystal Light White Grape. I’m not a huge fan of white grape juice, but perhaps absence has made the heart grow fonder. This is very light, and easy going down. It is also somewhat of a rarity, as no one in the clinic had ever seen it before it came in one of Ellen’s packages. As such, I have worked my way slowly through the packet, and am saving the last couple for the winners of our next medical jeopardy.

So there you have it. If you find yourself in the need of sugar-free drink mixes, print that out and take it along as a handy guide. [Again, though, we have lots of these in the clinic, so please don't think of this as a hint. But thanks anyway...]

Last but not least:

Yesterday afternoon, I got an unexpected package from Tony Fadell, a military Oncologist in Germany who was in my fellowship class with me. Doctors who go through a fellowship together (the training which is necessary to become a sub-specialist in medicine) spend a lot of time together during the grueling two or (as in our case) three years of the intense training. Tony, along with Tanya Wroblewski whom I have mentioned previously, was in my fellowship class, and we all became close friends—a friendship which continues to endure, though we each live in different corners of the globe. In the package was a picture of Tony’s beautiful kids, Sierra and Owen, and some books, candies, and CDs, including a 7-disc Pearl Jam set which will take me weeks to thoroughly digest. Also, a Christmas card, with an apology for its lateness (still earlier than the Christmas card which I sent Tony…tomorrow (yeah, that’s the ticket!). He signed it “brother Tony” and indeed that is what Tony is like—a brother.

Tony’s kindness in thinking of me, sending me some entertainment, and just plain going through the major hassle of putting all that stuff in a box, filling out the customs form, and getting the sucker in the mail, this is all typical of him, a humble, selfless guy. In fact, it is typical of so many of my friends and family out there. I feel like when I get home, I’ll need to visit each and every one of you wearing a t-shirt which proclaims “I am not worthy!”

When I worked at Walter Reed, we occasionally admitted men from the “Soldiers’ Home,” a complex in downtown DC which housed many veterans, usually 70-plus years-old. Although the Soldiers Home had its own hospital, they would be transferred to our facility when they got really sick. These men referred to Walter Reed as “Walter Wonderful” and did not have even the tinest whiff of facetiousness when they said it. They loved everything about the place, from the medical care they got, to the clean and windowed rooms, to the food they were served.

I feel much the same way with regards to each of you: one of the beautiful things that this experience has afforded me is the opportunity to see just how many good people there are in this world—people who at no benefit to themselves and often at considerable expense (both of money and time) find ways to do what they can for the soldiers over here. It seems that every day we receive a package addressed to “any soldier,” and full of goodies, shaving equipment, soap, playing cards, DVDs, books, magazines, chips, crackers, etc. Although the “stuff” is good to get, it is the simple fact that someone cared enough to send it that really affects me and my fellow soldiers, and provides an uplift on those days in which groundhog fever would otherwise be setting in.

Thanks.

[Editor's Note: In re-reading this tonight, I am afraid that it may be perceived as a thinly-veiled attempt to get drink mixes and/or other stuff sent out to the clinic. It is not at all intended that way; my small cadre of readers have been incredibly kind to me, and our clinic still has lots of stuff from previous boxes I have received. We are (truly) in need of nothing, and I personally have more than enough goodies, drink mixes, etc to make it through my last two months, and then some.]