I have spoken often of the people with whom I work on a daily basis. Here, then, a few more introductions for you, via pix of the weekend’s barbecue.

Pictured here in the obligatory card game are, from left, Staff Sargeant Carla Cano-Perez (C-P to all of us), 5′4 and with an “Hecho en Mexico” tattoo on the back of her neck, is in charge of the medics; SPC Cordero, whom you already know; SFC Catherine Langer, the Non-Commissioned Officer-In-Charge of our clinic. SFC Langer is the powerful, maternal figure who keeps our clinic together. She is a Wii-fitness fanatic, and has truly excellent taste in music, books, and movies (i.e., she agrees with me on most things).

SGT Stephen Evans, chillin'.

SGT Stephen Evans of Asheville, NC, who just got back from leave in Vegas. SGT Evans is another one of my favorite kids. A solid medic, and one of the best schmoozers I have ever known, which has served him (and us) well in Al Asad, where he has been able to finagle and trade for the things we so desperately need, from air conditioner parts to entire vehicles.

SGT Castulo Vera

And sauntering up the row of cans is one SGT Castulo Vera, known is our clinic as the World’s Tallest Mexican. Fortunately, SGT Vera is not standing sideways, or you would not be able to see him. Vera is a fine medic, and one of the few natural athletes in our company. A soft-spoken guy who doesn’t put much money in the “swear jar.”

SGT Ernest Hert and CPT Joshua Baker

SGT Ernest Hert of San Diego, CA is on the left. He is NOT soft-spoken like Vera, but is a good guy who would take a bullet for any one of his comrades, and one heck of a barbecue chef—the man of a million seasoning salts. SGT Hert will be heading to Ft Carson in a few months, but he doesn’t want to stay there; Hert loves to be where the action is, and will probably be in Afghan sometime next year, heading up a team of medics somewhere.

To SGT Hert’s right is my closest friend here, CPT Joshua Baker, who is our clinic’s optometrist (and the only one on Al Asad or any of the surrounding posts). CPT Baker is originally from upstate NY and currently from Alaska. He has been the personal fitness trainer for our entire company. He’ll be heading to Germany when he gets out of Iraq. I have publicly predicted that Baker will be the top Optometrist in the Army within 10 years. Not a tough call, really, as he is the epitome of “squared-away”: smart, in good shape, and with unimpeachable integrity. (Also, note the pre-formed beef patties on the grill.)

SGT Andres Villareal

This is another one of my favorite kids, SPC (p) Andres Villareal, who will be a SGT in one short week, and has given me the honor of “pinning” him (i.e., putting the rank on his uniform for the first time in a ceremony). SPC Villa is another one of those quiet, reliable, solid medics, who does whatever he is asked to, quickly and efficiently, with no complaining or excuses. One of my work-out buddies along with Baker, though he doesn’t look too tough here with his pink-hued leukemia water. Villa plans to get his nursing degree and become an officer.

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Finally, this little guy did not attend our barbecue (at least, not that I know of), but Maya made me promise that I would post a picture of the lizard we caught in clinic a month back (a cute little dude, and well-behaved), so here it is:

Lizard in the Al Asad TMC

Unbelievable as it is to me, it is true: as of this writing, I have only three Sundays left in Iraq. Exactly five weeks from this moment, I will be at Ft. Benning, GA, reunited with my sweetheart Lorri, completing the CRC redeployment process. Yet, as I watch the days tick down on my little desktop counter thingie, that date seems a long long way off, and I can’t quite feel it. That may be a good thing at this point; I’m guessing that once I am close enough that I can almost taste the clean, dust and/or diesel-free air, the seconds will start to drag a bit. Right now, I am still (mostly) enjoying the ride.

This week’s Saturday-to-Sunday routine was fairly typical. On Saturday night, my neighbors and I had our usual get-together, in this case to watch Band of Brothers just outside of our cans on CPT Baker’s ridiculously oversized big-screen laptop. After two episodes, a few of us hopped into Barney and headed to the DFAC for “midnight rats,” the half-dinner-half-breakfast meal served for those workers who can’t get to the regular meals because of work. I had a nice omelet, a couple of waffles, and grabbed some cereal for Sunday morning. Back home around 11:30, at which point I caught the remainder of the (crummy) Red Sox game versus the Angels on AFN. I usually stay up late on Saturday nights, because I don’t have to be anywhere on Sunday until 1 PM (first church meeting of the day). So, on Sunday morning, I attempted to catch up on my sleep.

I choose my words carefully here, because the reality is that, though I attempt to sleep late every single Sunday, I rarely succeed. This failure is, in itself, remarkable, as it is truly difficult to conceive of a more sleep-friendly scenario than mine on Saturday nights in Al Asad. To wit:

• I have no work to get to in the morning, since I’m generally off on Sundays.
• My family is out and about doing their own Saturday stuff thousands of miles away, and they generally do not call me after 11 PM (often, due to my spotty internet access, physically cannot do so). I’m like a doctor without a pager.
• I stay up late on Saturday nights, surfing the net, watching Saturday-afternoon baseball, blogging, etcetera, which means that I should be very tired by the time I hit the hay.
• I eat breakfast at midnight, stuffing myself to the gills with high-protein foods. (Mmm, L-tryptophan.)
• I have a small personal living area with entirely user-modifiable temperatures, and a nice, cozy bed, inside a hermetically-sealed plastic container. It is like I am in a sensory deprivation tank. Eerily like that, in fact.
• I am “The Major,” so none of my co-workers dare to knock on my door, barring emergencies. (This is not because I am mean; it’s just how my very professional soldiers have always treated me.)
• There is not much else to do except sleep.

In spite of all of this, my attempts to crash past about 0730 have generally been unsuccessful. I have diligently attempted to ascertain the reasons for this, so that I can eliminate them. One possible explanation was that I am awakened and stripped of melatonin by the very bright light that comes shining into my window starting at around 0430 (Iraq does not follow daylight savings time). I have eliminated this as a possibility by hanging my thick green army blanket over the window on Saturday night. Didn’t help.

Another possibility is the noise. I do, in fact, live not only near, but actually inside the confines of the airport. Planes, helicopters, and strange creatures which are combinations of the two (true story, that) constantly fly over my tin can, rattling the walls in attempt to find the harmonic frequency and bust me open like Joshua at Jericho. This kept me up a bit initially, but now I hardly notice it; the machinery sounds are simply a part of the aural landscape, and they block out the Halo sounds next door. At this point, I’m pretty well convinced that when I finally get home, in order to get any rest I’ll probably have to go and buy one of those “soundscapes” alarm clocks, but one with a “Combat” setting (perhaps right in between “Ocean” and “Rainforest”). So, I don’t think it’s the noise.

So what gives?

Unfortunately, I and many (all?) of my family members are blighted with the “Rupard Curse.” This is a multi-functional curse, including (but not limited to) the following items:

• Male members get receding hairlines at an astonishingly early age. Want proof? Check out my yearbook picture. My high school yearbook picture.
• Multiple chins, again at an early age, and even when the rest of the body is at ideal weight.
• The “John Travolta” syndrome, in which approximately five-sixths of all weight gained at any given time goes directly to the noggin. Rupard men all have big heads, but when we get a bit overweight, they become medium-sized planetoids. I swear, some of my med school pix look like I had just moments before discovered my latent peanut allergy. (By the way, this is also known as the “Barry Bonds Phenomenon.”)
• Proctalgia fugax. I’m not even gonna tell you what this is, or link to it; you’ll just have to look it up yourself. (If you don’t have it, you won’t understand it.)
• A retentiveness which (let’s face it, compadres), occasionally crosses that fine line into the nether reaches of OCD.
• And finally, the raison d’etre of this particular digression: Rupardian Insomnia. This is not quite like regular insomnia, in which the poor sucker has to wade through two post-Letterman infomercials before finally dropping off to abbreviated-but-productive sleep. The Rupardian variant renders the protagonist willing and often able to fall asleep, but unable to remain out for more than about 45 minutes at a time. He/she is constantly waking up, looking at the alarm clock (”Crap! Only 2:45″), and laying there in the dark for 5 to 500 minutes or so, before eventually drifting back to sleep for another 45 minutes. I like to think of this as “Reverse Narcolepsy” and I have been suffering for years, as have all of the rest of us. It wasn’t until I was married and able to enviously watch my wife as she slept, on-and-on, with no alarm-clock-checks and no full-body-pillow-reshufflings, that I figured out my sleep behavior was not that of a normal hunam being.

So, I conclude that my inability to sleep beyond 7:30 is multifactorial, with my sleep genetics being the primary culprit. Ah well, at least I’m good looking…

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Rupard Mailbag

About two weeks ago, I sent a true desperado of an e-mail to mom and dad, asking for a few items which were completely, entirely NOT essential, but which would make my time here a wee bit nicer. They responded, as they always do, by sending not one, but two packages just a few short days later. Unfortunately, when the United States Army and the United States Postal Service meet, as they do here in Iraq, the vaunted efficiency of both organizations dwindles just a bit.

So, although my parents sent the two packages quite literally at the same time, I received one last Saturday the 12th (included baby wipes, almond butter, Propel flavor packets, and the all-important Jelly Bellies), and spent the rest of the week expecting but not receiving package #2. After Monday and Tuesday passed, my hopes dropped a bit, and by Friday, I had given #2 up for lost. On Saturday, however, SGT Hert gave me hope when he told me that his wife’s boxes regularly got delivered a week or more apart from one another, and yesterday (Sunday), SPC Penkert knocked on my door and delivered said package #2 (more almond butter, much-needed black socks, more flavor packets, more baby wipes). Thanks very much, LymeRupards!

This bodes well for my post-office-happiness this week, as I am expecting a couple of packages from my sweet wife, who has an uncanny knack for sending me exactly what I need.

I am writing at 0014 hours Iraq time, from the not-quite-comfort of my can (getting there, though), where our electricity has just come back on after a very long day of spoiled food, 100-degrees-in-the-absolute-darkness heat, and scarce generator parts which affected only our small section of the base. Air conditioning is, even in the high-desert, still a luxury, but tonight it verged on necessity as the members of our camp found our hermetically sealed can-tainers simply not habitable after a day in the sweltering sun. More tomorrow on the impromptu outdoors get-together that this situation fostered as it persisted through the evening and finally into the next day, but suffice it to say that, as I lie here on my sweaty bunk, I am grateful for the white noise of the working fan next to me, and for the modest ambient light of my laptop as it sends this message out to you.

Goodnight.

Friday was the Fourth of July here on Al Asad. For some reason (in retrospect probably unwarranted), I thought that this would be treated as a “special” day here, but ’twas (mostly) not to be. No one really expected any time off—we are, after all, in a war zone, and the bad guys certainly don’t stop doing their bad guy stuff on a United States’ holiday. But I though that maybe there would be a special meal or something, like there was on the Army’s birthday.

Nope. Nada. (Actually, there was a nice display at the Ripper DFAC, but food-wise: nothing)

So, we made our own. Early on Friday, word got out that the PX had received a shipment of steaks from America, and we quickly dispatched a medic with a lot of twenties in hand to go check it out. She came back with a bunch of frozen goodies, including a couple of ribeyes for me. At lunchtime, outside the clinic in the covered triage area, we had an old-fashioned barbie, with some good onion burgers (I ate one of those) and our various steaks. SGT Christie England of Middlebury, CT cooked mine (and another one which I bought for our optometrist) and it was truly fabulous. I’m not usually a fan of previously-frozen steak, but this was melt-in-my-mouth delicious. Definitely the best thing I have eaten since my arrival to The Brown Zone many months ago.

Clinic in the afternoon was completely dead, with only two patients (bilateral lower extremity swelling in a foreigner who may just have hepatitis C, and an allergic rash). Right after clinic I had planned to hit the Gym and work off some of that ribeye, but we got a report that the Ripper DFAC had Reuben sandwiches, and we have been waiting for those. 1LT Coleman, SPCs Villareal, Lee, and Santiago all went with us there, where we each ate a sandwich and brought a few home for our buddies. I also brought an entire carry-out container full of olives and pickles, as I have been craving salty things of late.

Because I had royally pigged-out on Friday, I vowed to do a couple of cardio/aerobic sessions on Saturday. Clinic was again very light, and afterwards, before anyone could whisk me in a truck and off to lunch, I snuck off to the gym. After lifting weights a bit, I did 6.5 miles on the treadmill, and then went home to eat lunch. A couple of hours later, I was meeting COL Gober to do the fourteen-mile bike loop. CPT Baker came with me, but when we met COL Gober at the clinic, he had to make some calls.

Turns out there had been a MASCAL at the hospital, a military term for multiple casualties coming in at once. The story is that a suicide bomber had gone into an Iraqi facility (police?) and blown himself up, and injured seven of the good guys. There were a number of internal injuries, one Iraqi with a severe leg artery laceration, but no deaths among the good guys. The bomber himself had been fatally wounded. When the COL called back to get results of a CT scan, one of the patients had a kidney issue, so he had to head back to the hospital so would not be making the ride with us. Baker and I went, and with the winds picking up, it ended up being a very tough ride, and by the end of it, I felt completely wasted. Once I was back home, I watched a rather uninteresting Yanks-Sox game, and fell asleep pretty early on.

I think that when I look back at this July fourth, it will be a memorable one, in spite of the lack of formal celebration. The experience which, I believe, will most spring to my mind is a sweet one: On Friday night, I went to our small LDS congregation’s Family Home Evening meeting, during which we read aloud the Declaration of Independence, and played some dominoes in the little shack-like annex off of the back of the main chapel. During our meeting, the Jewish congregation shared the annex with us and, a bit apart from us, sang some rousing, traditionally Jewish-sounding songs in Yiddish. I will add that to the many surreal experiences I have had out here: a bunch of Latter-day Saints on one side of a slap-dash plywood building in the desert mountains of Iraq, with a gathering of Jewish soldiers on the other end, all of us acting out that most American of pursuits: the praising of God in accordance with our own consciences. Served well to remind me of the reasons why our forefathers declared independence in the first place.

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.

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.]