Week 3

On Wednesday my OIC (officer in charge) went to a command meeting and let Camp Virginia know that they now have a dentist. It may have not been related, but on Thursday I saw 8 patients. It was a really busy day. Many of the Stryker teams are coming through and when they come to me, they have such limited time before they leave again that my hands are tied as far as what I can do for them. In fact just last night I had a guy come with an absessed tooth (said it had been bothering him the entire deployment!) and I couldn't do a root canal on him because his plane was leaving in 2 hours. I just gave him antibiotics and percocet, hopefully the change in altitude won't be too bad on him.

Last night we had some friends from our detachment come up and have a barbeque with us at Camp Virginia. It was a great turnout, was curious why anyone would want to leave their camp to come here, but as it turns out there are things to be desired about a small camp away from the mother-ship.

I got talked into doing a 5K run at 7 pm. I wasn't plannig on doing it because I thought it would be too hot, but the people from the other camp twisted my arm and I went ahead and did it. Glad that I did as I won and got a $25 gift certificate. It reminds me of Yuma because there are about 35 guys running the race and only 7 girls.... makes it much easier to take home a prize.

Not much else went on this last week. Now I am just in my office trying to wrap up my applications to University of Iowa and University of Michigan.

Week 2

LTJG Greenwood and I standing outside the clinic (TMC) Troop Medical Clinic
My House (second door on the end)

Single Operatory (I have 4 in the clinic)

Dental Wing

This week I did more organizing, throwing away, cleaning off dust etc. I saw a total of 13 patients some with legit dental issues, and then some that were definitely something that we needed to call the WAAAmbulance for, including my 8:30 Dental Emergency that happened today!Twice now since I have arrived I have had someone come running after me on my way back from the gym to tell me we had a dental emergency, and "where was I?"... of course I don't have a duty phone like the docs,(we are working on that) so nobody can get ahold of me unless I am in my room.

Where was I? I will give you a hint: Eating, Sleeping, Working Out, Doing Laundry or In the Shower/Bathroom....that is where I will be for the next 7 months :)

It seems I frequently go from being "Oh, she is just a dentist" to " Thank god we have a dentist" which I am okay with.... unlike The Hangover, you will not get me to extract my own tooth by telling me I'm not a real doctor!

In fact... the PA, and Nurse have had to see so many rectums lately, I am very proud to not be a real doctor:)

On with my story.... so one was a root canal at 9:30 pm last Sunday, but the one worthy of the Waaambulance was today. I got the message on my way back from the shower that a girl at a nearby base knocked her tooth out. So I asked them to get ahold of her again and tell her to put the tooth in milk (yes, that is not just urban myth) and come on down. 2 hours later, the pt shows up with her partial denture in hand, and a plastic tooth submerged in about 10 oz of milk! Are you kidding.... the tooth was not even real, it had broken off her denture as she was devouring crab legs last night! ARRRG

#1. WTF

#2. We didn't get crab legs last night!

I am posting a bunch of pics for you guys to see the lay of the land and the clinic.

1 Week Down 26 to go !?

Made it through the first week! My god, the clinic is a wreck. Not only have I had to go through and remove about $4,500 worth of expired items, the dust on the shelves and boxes of supplies makes me SICK! I knew there would be dust, but when it comes to items that will be used in a health care setting, I just cannot accept things being visibly dirty! I saw only 2 patients this week but it is a good thing! I have had trouble with just about everything that I could have:
- No phone, internet, or printer in my office
- Lack of supplies, tons of expired items
- No access to program to input patients in dental system (all my medical collegues use a similar system, the dentists however use the Army's program while in theatrer to input dental encounters)
- My Tech, bless him, is having just about as much trouble as me and so I have to stop my projects to help him with things... which by the way...I have no idea how to either, so I have to read about it, then show him!
The big wigs came up from Camp AJ and I believe they are going to send me someone else who knows something about Dentistry (thank god). In the "real world" there would be a senior enlisted person who would guide my tech on what he needs to do, how to do it etc, and there would be little interaction between my tech and me (except when we started treating patients), but since there are no senior enlisted people that have ever worked in dental, they cannot guide him.... which leaves me. All the time spent helping him, is time less time that I have to do the stuff I need to get up and running. Wow, am I ranting or what?
Anyway, before I bore you all into never reading my blog I will point out some highlights
1. We have a starbucks!
2. The gym is nice and is not busy much
3. I saw a cat and I gave him water (Violation of a general order!)
4. My room is my own, even if it does not have a bathroom and the shower facility is located about .2 miles away
5. The DFAC (dining facility) has OK food....at least it has a salad bar
I am going to post some pictures really soon! Love you all.

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"!!!

The Gas Chamber Day

Leaving NEMTI