The Ladies of Camp Virginia : LTJG Rousa (PA), Me, LTJG Greenwood (Nurse)

The bain of my existence, 2 compressors+ 2 pumps = my nightmare

This sign cracks me up....

Ahhh..... HM3 Duran, my dental tech....

Our "movie theatre"

My first month in Kuwait was official on September 8th, and my first 2 months away from home is official today! Yay, we are making some progress.

I wish I could say a lot has happened since I last blogged, but on the contrary, I have not blogged because things slowed down drastically here. The Stryker Brigade that came through at the end of August only stayed about 2 weeks temporarily bringing our camp population up to 1,200-1,300 but since then we have been back to our permanant party population of aproximately 800-900 soldiers (and sailors I guess:). From my estimation that means there was about 34,000 teeth under my care for awhile :) My weekly numbers went from aproximately 30 patients down to a lonely 9! We should have another surge coming in a couple of weeks and so hopefully business will be up again.

To stay busy I have been trying to help out in medical as much as I can (we had a SHOT-X last week .... short for shot exercise) in which we vaccinated about 1,000 soldiers and sailors with the H1N1 vaccine/flu vaccine combination. We had quite a line out the door for a couple of days, and one of the corpsman was kind enough to volunteer to let me give him his vaccine. It sounds simple considering almost every patient I have to inject with a needle, but when it comes to giving a shot on the outside of the mouth... it was like my first injection all over again. I was shaking and it took me a good 20 min after I was done to stop feeling jittery inside. The docs and nurse had a pretty good time making fun of me. I was able to get back at them later when the following patient came in:

The patient was about 21 and he came in to see the doc with a complaint that he had a lip ring stuck in his lip. The kid had gone on leave, decided to pierce his lip and then unfortunately got kicked in the mouth (probably was out one night...being all that he could be: ). Instead of taking out the stud, he left it and the cut healed over the post on the inside of his mouth. When he went back on duty, he had to remove it (not allowed to have that in the military obviously) but he could not access the part to remove it since it was inside his lip and healed over. So, he cut the outside ball off (not sure how) and so all that was showing was a little shaft that poked out (almost looked like a little black hair). He still couldn't get the other part out, so he came in asking if someone could remove it.
The PA (an army CPT) asked if this was something I felt comfortable doing because he had never had to cut the inside of the lip and he wasn't about to start. This was funny because they cut things open ALL THE TIME! Including cysts, absesses, etc. So now it was my time to make fun and say "ohh, you don't want to do something on the inside of the mouth, so now you know why a shot on the outside makes me uncomfortable!"

I made a little tiny cut and pulled out the guys lip ring, sewed it up and he was good to go!

I have had shadow now for the last 2 weeks and it has been really fun for me. He is a SSGT in the Army, about 24 or so but he is a medic with a unit here that runs convoys from Kuwait to Iraq every 2 days. It really sucks for him because he sits in a Humvee and drives 5 hours up to Iraq, unloads food and gear and supplies to guys, and then drives back the next day. Anyway, he came in when he found out there was a dentist here because he really wants to go to dental school and so I have been letting him watch procedures, and talking to him about how to get into school etc. He is more serious than many of the corpsman I have come across about wanting to go to dental school as he is currently taking the online Kaplan test, already has his undergraduate degree, and has come by almost every day that he has had off (even when we don't have patients) to watch and ask questions. His dad is still in the Army and is currently deployed in Iraq about 3 hours further North from where he is bringing supplies to, I am sure his mom is a wreck right now.

We had another race this Saturday in memory of 9/11. It was a 5K and I took first in my age group, and I think I was second overall for females. The PA here is 25 and she is fast! Reminds me that I am getting pretty old :(

Tonight, we are going to ride a camel?! I will take pictures and post later.