friday night after spending the entire day in AJ, we are headed back home, and while we are driving we are chatting. i am talking about my past experiences here and how on my very first drive to my old camp the car broke down and i sat in the crazy desert heat with NO water in the middle of the afternoon, totally jetlagged and miserable..only to be followed by my very next time of base when we had a flat tire and the spare was dead...sitting in the desert heat in the middle of the afternoon really is not a very enjoyable experience....so AS i am talking about this we hear an unusual sound..whomp whomp whomp...but then it goes away when the driver slows down...it doesn't FEEL like a flat...and we are in a huge 12 passenger van...

so, i say speed up and see if it happens again...next thing we know this flap of tire goes flying OFF and we hear it..so we pull over..and the tire is full of air, but the middle section of the tire is missing!

so we need to change the tire...those 3 corpsmen worked diligently and had that tire changed relatively fast for such a big vehicle...

meanwhile, we (esp me, since i went swimminng and was looking forward to mongolian bbq) were starving....dinner closes at 8 PM....we got there at 8:05! what a drag, the doors were locked....so we had subway sandwhiches at charleys....not too bad, but NOT mongolian!

when we returned to the clinic, i was labeled the albatross...hhhhmmmm, i wonder if anyone will let me in the car with them--or better yet, how many more times am i gonna sit on the side of the road in the desert of kuwait.

the one thing i forgot to mention, was the young arab who stopped to help. he was in his man dress with his white hat..and i went up to talk to him (as my guys were busy with the tire) i thought our strip of tire hit his car and was asking that and he said no, he just wanted to know if we needed help. later i thought how funny that must have been, this blond american FEMALE packing heat...i wonder what he thought.

ok, i am getting these little mini opportune times to swim, and take advantage of them every chance i get...i had to go to AJ for a leadership meeting all day....followed by a quick trip to the pool.

well, there is a camp (airforce type) relatively close to me and it has a pool...i need to get there!
my friend ann the oic of the other camp wanted to take me there for my birthday, we could swim a bit and shop a bit, cuz with the airforce everything is wonderful and nice...especially the facilities. the pic is of me and ann...she is from hawaii as well, my fellow FNP we deployed together!

so i got a quick 30 min swim in there....the pool is a tad bit longer than AJ, but NO lines, NO t's on the wall, and the lane line i swam in was SOOOO tiny i kept hitting the wall...BUT, i was in the water and doing my thing....what a great feeling.

so, this past week i swam 3 times! now, i am going to PLAN to get to the aiforce pool minimum 2 times a week if i can...a little cross training with the bike, and i should be in maintenance mode until i get home sometime in feb!

so, my birthday was coming up, holy smokes i am 45 years old, i don't feel like it..well, PARTS of my body...knees and joints do...but overall, i am feeling pretty darn great.

the biggest treat for me would be to get to go for a swim! ( not a whole lot of other things i want to do, or can do at this point as we are not allowed on any trips into kuwait during sep as it is ramadan...the holy season)

so i plan to drive down with 2 of my staff who need to go to AJ. i figured i would have lunch with my boss then hit the pool..can't ask for a better time in kuwait. (the little things in life make me happy) sarah (my boss) gave me a great wee presents and then i hit the pool..4500 meters..the least i can do or at this point the most i can do..being outta swimming shape and all.

the flu season is coming, and we need to start thinking about flu shots and possible pandemic stuff so the prev med folks planned a brief at my clinic a few days ago.

so, i hear the name of the prev med doc...danny schiau...another member of the humanitarian team in kenya that i did with UDOH 10 years ago! i told him Udoh was here a few weeks before....on his way into iraq. apparently, danny had been working with udoh helping him to become a PA.

again, it was great seeing another blast from my past and reminiscing about the african safari we went on and hanging out at the hotel/beaches in kenyan.....great memories.

the koreans have a small contigency here and have folks coming and going as well. i had met the ltcol of the koreans as he had stopped by once to have dental work done and find out who i was or whatever. unfortunately he speaks no english and has a translator with him.the koreans are great athletes and i see them at the gym all the time....

this lt col is leaving as his time is up and his replacement is coming, so i get a call that he wants to stop by the clinic and meet with me...thinking it was a formal meeting to introduce his replacement, but it wasn't.

he gave me a nice workout t-shirt and a korean coin as a token. he said he sees me at the gym as well. the new guy was coming in a few days.

i was so excited, i wore my new shirt at the gym that day.

our newest coalition forces are the mongolians....amazing looking folks with really cool names--sound russian like.

they are headed home, i think....anyway, the mongolian surgeon came by and needed some medications--simple stuff like allergy meds, and what not, so we were able to accomodate his request.

this fellow had the most FLAT affect of anyone i know...not sure if it was the language barrier or what but it was in my sense, comical.

so, he came by a few days later, needing a couple more pills...and he showed me a cute key chain with a little eskimo looking girl and he said it was for me...from mongolia. he gave me another one of a hut or typical home they live in and i gave it to noa.

noa's goal after that was to get his camera and get a picture of the mongolians at mongolian barbecue--something we have every friday night! i asked him if he did, and he said he forgot his camera..oh well. next time.

btw, i asked the mongolian doctor what they thought of mongolian bbq, and he states for them it is just meat and onions...now we know the truth.

so, sunday which happened to be my duty day was busier than i had expected....as i am in the doing my job, and annie is still hanging around cuz her flight was that eve--and we dubbed this as her "decompression stop" all the sudden the staff come running back with a marine who got his fingers sliced up pretty bad while his buddy was playing with his knife. WHY do they do that? this happend all the frickin' time, marines play with snakes, scorpians, and thier K-bars...and they get hurt while doing so.

this youngster had ONE hour till he had to leave to go into iraq. at first we looked at his fingers and the lacerations were sooooo deep i thought for sure his tendons were gone, that or circulation, something...but, after a thorough investigation everything was intact, we cleaned him up annie had him sutured sooooo fast that he was outta here within the hour...loaded him up with antibiotics and 18 stitches and sent him on his merry way.

so last friday i went to a class down at the mecca cultural awareness, so i can be aware of the arab culture. i went to it last time i was here..and it was ok then, this time it was painful as a biased agnostic syrian presented....after suffering through that, i went for a quick swim and headed back to camp virginia to learn annie lopez a collegue PA from hawaii was finally passing through on her way back to hawaii--after her 10 month deployment--it started as 6 months.

she was with the marine wing in iraq...so it was so great to visit with her and catch up and chat about her experiences of her deployment.

but the coolest thing about annie being here, is we have a hidden bond between us..we BOTH were stuck at Navistar in our past deployments! she had been there 6 months prior to me and we commiserated about it together again...tooo funny.

since i have bunk beds, she was able to get a good night sleep in my room before heading back to the mainland. i felt like school girls again!

the next day, ann uetz, another colleague NP from hawaii, who is the OIC of a busier camp came down and we had lunch together...3 of us from Hawaii in kuwait hanging out...crazy.

last night i went to dinner with noa the family practice doc...we were in our PT clothes and were going to go to the gym after eating.

as we were going to get our ID's checked at the dining facility the soldier checking cards mumbled something to us....i didn't hear what he said, but noa said to him that "she is military"--apparently he thought i was civilian....as we walked a way noa says to me "and she is the highest ranking officer on base" in a joking manner, which i thought was hysterical, cuz i never thought about it before, and as a matter of fact, it is true!!

toooo funny.

last night at 1100 pm, i get a call that there is an albanian patient that may have an appendicitis per his doctor and needs to be seen. so i get outta my comfortable bed and get to my clinic to wait for my patient to arrive as we sent the ambulance to pick him up as his tent is very far away from the clinic.

so the albanian (who speaks little english) was brought to the clinic with his doctor (who spoke english)

low and behold the guy has CLASSIC appendicitis symptoms textbook even going on for ~10 hours. he looks great, vitals signs were beautiful but rebound tenderness and when i asked him to hop up and down he did not like that. since don't have a way to measure his white count or CT capability i had to transport him down to the hospital. so by 1157 i am DONE with him and ready for him to go away--and it takes the ambulance team 2 hours before they come to transport him to AJ....which get my sufficient time to work with his officers....cuz apparently, they are leaving to go home to albania after 6 months in iraq, tomorrow. at 2 AM, me trying to coordinate the logistics for this evolution was comical. they want to know what is going to happen, when is he going to leave, and they have no contact information for anything...i told them to come back in the morning and we would know more, then.

well, i learned my patient went to the OR this around8 am or so.....the officers came back into find out what the status was with him. i explained the situation and pending how he felt, he MAY be able to fly out with the rest of them the next day.....this is when i became the albanian liaison! i was calling all over to figure out how to get him home if he is unable to fly the next day...they were really concerned as well...stating only a few flights into albania per year, and the families would be devastated if they showed up from iraq without him...etc etc.

later in the day, i called the surgeon for a status...and low and behold, he was recovering great and i was told he would be fit to fly home the next morning....so i informed my albanian contingency who were hanging out.

so, as far as i know...they all left together.

interesting what people remember about you.....and you of them.

yesterday, i ran across, yet another group of navy medical types coming OUT of iraq totally giddy cuz they are headed home. and i ran across a nurse i knew in san diego YEARS ago...and the ortho surgeon...jon lynott!

i worked with him in guam...he had to BEST condo in tumon bay as i recall..that they bought--for a pretty penny, and was a great investment.

what he remembers about me is that i am lightning in the water (we apparently did a few swim races in guam) and that i turned over the bioethics committee chairman job to him and it helped him out tremendously! he even REMEMBERED my miserable knee!! ha ha....

isn't that too funny....

Prior to leaving Hawaii for this second free trip to kuwait, i called my detailer--the person who tells me where to go in regards to the navy and duty stations, and i asked if i could EXTEND in hawaii...the answer was a big fat NO. (and this is a friend of mine)

So, at this point in my life....quality of life is important, so location is key and since there are only so many nurse practitioner billets in the navy..i am a bit limited. AND the ONLY place i want to move to after living in hawaii--which i don't want to leave anyway, is SAN DIEGO.

so, when my detailer offered me ONLY 2 positions, one being OAK HARBOR WASHINGTON (where i nearly fell outta my chair) or SAN DIEGO, teaching at the schoolhouse there, I took that one lickity split...she deterred me a bit, cuz of the promotion think, said it is not a good place to go for me if i want to make 06. i told her i really want the job, and to "pencil me in" she did it with great hesitation.

i sent her an email last week to solidify my future, where am i going if i have to leave hawaii....
and she has given me as i had hoped SAN DIEGO, where i will be teaching at the School house (teaching corpsmen to become independent duty corpsmen) I leave hawaii in june, report to san diego in july...not a whole lot of time left in hawaii when i get back, drat.

oh, well..i can always go back to hawaii....after living on islands (and kuwait) for 7 years....this should help me decide if i miss the mainland or not.

another glamourous thing about this camp is the showers...which are extremely inconveniently located several blocks from where we live.
so, my day revolves around when i plan to take a shower..cuz there are only 6 showers, and i have 9 women in my staff--and that does not include all the other women in the other units that are permanent staff at the base.
as i was gone the other day for death by meetings at camp arifjan, i learned there was a big sand dust storm here..
well, carlos had just taken a shower and was walking the several minute walk back to his room when the sand storm hit...by the time he got to his room he was covered in dust just like a powdered donut! i asked if he went back to take another shower!!

the day before the horribly painful humid hot, not wanting to walk to the dfac day...we had a totally amazing biblical thunder storm.
i hear this loud kaboom..which i thought was explosive from up the road (EOD) but it was 11 PM and woke me out of a dead sleep...then i realized it was thunder.
my room was shaking due to the noise and it poured like you would not believe. but within minutes after the rain, it is incredibly dry again...crazy, eh?
could this be global warming.....something to ponder.

so, i have to say....september is by far the hottest most humid month here as far as i am concerned and since this is my second september here in 2 years, i believe i have the credibility to back me up on my observation.

so this past week it has been crazy humid...and HOT ugggghhhh.
to give you and idea about my existence here...the DINING FACILITY (DFAC) is a healthy 1/4 mile away...walking on gravel rocks and sand...believe me this 6 minute walk can feel like near death in the heat, add on the humidity and it is absolutely insane.

2 days ago was the moste hellish walk i have EVER done as i was painfully miserable, more so than ever before. i decided to start a log and note the most painful walk back from lunch..and sep 9th is by far the most excruciating...and my staff will agree with me!

the duty crew will use the car or van to drive to the dfac...I figure the walk is good for us, but if we experience heat and humidity like that again...we are ALL driving!!