8 Years

I’ve written about this before and don’t think I can improve on what I wrote here and here, the details were fresher on my mind. 8 years later and 9/11 was one of those events in my life that totally shaped how my entire future would turn out. Two buildings tumbling down in a city 3000 miles awake shook everything, the repercussions rang the world like a bell and I think that ringing will echo for a long long time. In a sense, my life split in two that day. There was the person I was before which included my early Naval Service then getting out and going to school and taking up work as a mechanic, I was carefree and living for the moment. Then 9/11 where the shock of the events pushed me outside of my life and I looked down at doing and knew, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be at. The next day, I signed back up with the Navy and a couple weeks later, I was back in, minus a rank.

Two years and five months later, I was making my first trip into Iraq and eventually I would spend over 2 years of my life in that desert. This dry and inhospitable place soon became my home away from home, humans can get used to anything. In many ways, in my journeys into the war zone, I was lucky. No one I cared about died nor was I hurt but I could see the toil that repeated trips was were having. To me, to my fellow military members, war changes you and the person who went in isn’t the same person who comes out the other side.

It’s strange to say but for the troops on the ground, this might be the safest war ever conducted. We had the best gear protective gear ever issued to a military force, yes there are deaths but compare the numbers to any other war or any major battle and it’s a drop in the bucket. We were surviving, running through 120 degree heat carrying around 80 pounds of battle gear and more often than not, making it home whole. In body at least. ORM, Operational Risk Management was the key phrase, we get more safety briefs then most people in the civilian world could imagine and as boring as they are, they seem to be working.

So many changes have happened since I came back in, medically, we’re now tracking all of our immunizations online, our notes are now written on a networked system. There are still bugs being worked out but I wonder what the result will be in 10 years? Military medicine in the 90’s was basically unchanging and now, the changes are so fluid and fast moving that if you turn your back, you won't recognise what's waiting for you at your desk.

This month, I’m re-enlisting for probably the last time, I’m 4 and a half years out from my 20 and I’m going to have to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Hopefully it involves hanging out with the wife and dog alot. I’m proud to have taken part in these great events, when I’m talking to my grand kids, I can say, "I was there", and if they are so inclined, they can come back here and catch a snapshot of what I went though. They’ll see the gaps and wonder, what happened there and I’ll still have a few tales left to tell.

Doc in the Box on the removing of toenails

I am a corpsman but don't really blog about medicine that much, so here’s a medical post. The most common medical problem that requires minor surgery while deployed with my Marines seems to be ingrown toenails (I don't know if that's true for others but it is for me) and here’s a video I made of me in action taking out part of a toenail (yes, I screwed up and ripped it in half, but it still came out, just wasn't as pretty on film) and there are subtitles. If you easily get grossed out, don’t click play, for me, it's just something I do at work.

For someone who has a blog called Doc in the Box, you would think that I would have more medical posts.

Update because the readers asked, I did use a nerve block and a rubber tourniquet to stop the blood flow, there are gloves on my hands, they’re just sort of skin toned, my doc was filming and did a great job at it. The wound was lightly packed with cotton for the day a 2x2 and regular 1 inch medical tape wrapped around the toe. The patient actually said it was pain free the next day. There’s no sucking it up unless bullets are flying over my head or if the patient is drunk and has just punched me in the jaw while I'm trying to sew them up (happens).

Yay, fixed my links on the side:)

but I killed my cool clock, I suppose some readers will rejoice:(

MCAS Miramar 2008 Airshow F-22 Raptor

I've seen many shows, I can't even count how many times I've seen the Blue Angels but the F-22 was something totally different. This plane did things I wouldn't have expected to see out of a Robotech cartoon. The thrust vectoring really does make a difference, while other shows showed off speed and power, this aircraft danced across the sky, making incredibly tight turns. Remember the movie Top Gun and the spin that killed Goose? This plane did that on purpose and it was a strange sight to see a big fast military jet doing the tricks that are normally reserved to aerobatic biplanes.

Zune finally adds support for Audible.com

I admit it, I like listening to audiobooks when I drive cross country and usually with my 1000 mile hauls and the cost of CD's, it can been an expense proposition. I did the Twilight series while driving 3000 miles over to Arizona and northern California which was a hundred bucks give or take. Which would have cost me a fraction of that if I could have downloaded it on my Zune which wasn’t compatible with the format at the time.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I downloaded the Zune 3.0 firmware. Wow, neat, games, down load songs directly from any public Wi-Fi through the Zune Marketplace and it labels songs that it plays through the FM receiver that you can download if you like. While all of that is cool, the best thing I found last week was support for Audible.com. Yay, instant gratification at the click of a button, 7.49 the first 3 months and 14.95 for each month after which gives me one downloaded book per month and 30% off all of my other downloads. Yes, it might be a lot spend for a non-reader but for me, it’s days off of my life searching through stores or waiting for something to arrive in the mail through Amazon.

Suddenly, that long drive doesn’t seem so long and lonely anymore.

Miramar Air Show 2008 MAGTF Display (Marine Air Ground Task Force)

Marines showing their stuff, it gives Joe Public a small but exciting glimpse of what the real deal is like. The show is put on by regular Marines with no other special training then doing what they normally do day to day yet they pull it off perfectly each year.