Finally Arrived

There is really so much that has gone on in the past 4 weeks and I was unable to get internet access so I will fill you in...bullet style.

July 12-17: Left Groton, CT and said goodbye to my favorite boys Sparky and Brad. I arrived in Port Hueneme California for inprocessing. This place really tested my patience as each day I was there we had about an hour of things to do stretched into a whole day. This sight is to make sure the women aren't pregnant, that everyone is fit for the deployment and take care of any administrative things before going to training. The great news was we stayed in an awesome hotel for 5 nights.... not a good way to prepare us for what was to come.

July 17-22: Took a 2 hour bus trip up to Camp Pendleton to a sight called NEMTI. Naval Expiditionary Medicine Training Institute. The first week we broke our group of 160 sailors into platoons, decided the leadership organization for the next 3 weeks, and adjusted to our berthing (living quarters). The place we slept was called a sea hut and it was open bay with 10-20 other people. We slept on cots with sleeping bags, and kept our sea bags under the cot and a footlocker at the base. It took some adjustment but I was sleeping well in about 3 nights. I celebrated Brad's 31st birthday on July 19th. It was very sad to be so far apart during this time.

July 23-July 30 : This was a busy week. We had classes, figured out how to get 160 peoples laundry done, and had some lab portions of training to do. It was starting to get sort of fun as we got to know eachother, after all, we were comprised of endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, surgeons, nurses, dentists, PA's, optomotrists, internists, family practice doctors, health care administrators, etc.... so our dinner conversations were, well...... usually pretty gross! I have a whole new appreciation for Nurses, I can say that for sure. Our classes consisted of:

- Land Navigation

-Use of the SINGARS radio (single channel ground to air radio system)

-Basic Dari Language

-General Orders : no alcohol, no pornography, no feeding or trying to domesticate/capture wildlife, no buying foreign currency, no taking of weapons, uniforms etc as "prizes"...and some others I can't really remember.

- What to do if captured as a POW

- IED detection

For the "hands on portion" we did the following

-we took a 5 vehicle convoy through a fake town and simulated mortor fire, and IED explosion (real sound effects here)

-Identified 10 IED's on a pathway

- Gas chamber exercise (went into a room with CS gas and put on our masks and made sure we knew how to work them) Of course you get some gas on you and it burns your eyes, throat and makes you salivate and your nose runs.

-HUMVEE roll-over (almost like a fair ride, except you are wearing 35 pounds of protective gear and you are holding a M16 that you have to make sure stays squeezed between your legs as the vehicle rolls....not so easy)

-Weapons Qualification on the M9, some people also had to qualify on the M16. I did not, however I did get to shoot about 30 rounds on the M16 which was fun.

- MOPP gear training ( Mission Oriented Protective Posture). Shows us how to put on boots, gloves, pants, gas mask and top that you would have to have if you had a biological contaminant.

July 22- Aug 6 : Basically had some more training (some of the above hands on portion was done during the beginning of this week) and then we just cleaned up camp and got ready for our long plane ride. I had found out late last week that I would not be going to Camp Arifjan which is the main base in Kuwait, in fact, I would be serving as the sole dental provider in a Camp about 2 hours away called Camp Virginia. I was not too happy about this as the clinic had not had a full time dentist for 2 years and I knew that meant I would either be walking into a wreck, or their may not be enought patients to keep the time going by fast.

Aug 6,7 : It took us about 24 hours until we touched down in Kuwait. Had 3 layovers in between and got into Camp AJ at about 4 am on Saturday August 7. We did not go to bed, we put our gear in tents and waited for our CO to come and brief us about what was to come.

Aug 7 5:00 pm: After the CO's brief, they waisted no time. I took a bus with about 10 other up to Camp Virginia. You can imagine by now I was exhausted. Almost 36 hours of traveling. We traveled in buses with the curtains closed so I couldn't see much of anything. I arrived at about 9 pm in Camp and was shown to my little hut..... I laid my head down but had a lot of trouble sleeping despite my exhaustion... thoughts: " WHERE THE HELL AM I"!!!