Concerts and Camel Rides

Camel Crossing

This past weekend we traveled to Camp Buehring for a concert by the band Filter.  Buehring is one of the other outlying Army camp's in Kuwait.  It's about an hour car ride from Camp Virginia.  The concert was pretty good and it was nice to just get away and see some of our other friends.  On the way we ran across some camels being herded across the road.

It was really sad because their front or back legs were
tied together making it hard for them to walk.  

Me and Danika (the dentist)

Don't worry that is "near beer" or non-alcoholic beer that you can buy at the PX.  There is no alcohol allowed in theater.  Additionally Kuwait is a dry country.  They also have a non-alcoholic wine that we like!!! 

Kosha (PA), me (nurse), Danika (dentist) and Becky (PA).
Kosha works at Camp Beurhing full time and Becky has started
going to Camp Beurhing a few days a week to help out since they
are so busy.  Danika and I are at Camp Virginia full time.

Mass Casualty Drill

Evaluating a patient in our trauma bay

The main event this week was our Mass Casualty exercise.  This was a test to make sure that we

could function efficiently and treat or medevac patient's if a real mass casualty event takes place.  We knew it was going to happen on Wednesday but we didn't know what time or the number of patient's we would have.  

Unloading one of our "patients" from the ambulance ... 

Documenting medications in the patient's chart ...

Our entire staff of corpsmen, docs, and me (the only nurse)
including our Army doc and Army medics. 

Overall everything went well and we successfully triaged, treated and evacuated 5 critical patients before they ended the exercise.  It was cool to work together with our Army counterparts and the EMS staff at our Camp.  

KUWAIT

EMF-K
Expeditionary Medical Facility - Kuwait

After spending 12 hours at Arifjan, the main military base in Kuwait we drove the 2 hours to Camp Virginia where I'll be spending the next 7 months.  It is a small base on the Western side of Kuwait.  There are about 1,000 permanent party military personnel that live on the base.   The rest of the personnel here are transients meaning they are on their way into or out of Iraq or Afghanistan.  So we provide medical support to the permanent party as well as to the transients.

The entrance to our clinic. The awning to the right is the bathrooms.  That's right, there is no indoor plumbing even in the clinic so if we need a urine sample the patient has to use a porter potty. 

We live about twenty feet away from the clinic.  Since the Corpsmen take turns being on call, and one of our providers is always on call, it's nice that they don't have to walk far in the middle of the night to get to the clinic.  As the only nurse here I'm not assigned a set night call rotation but always sort of on call for nursing things.  Luckily, they haven't needed me at night yet.

Our rooms

I've decorated the inside of my room to make it as cozy as possible.  It helps that my mom sent me a poster with pictures of Bella!!!  We aren't in our rooms very much except on Sunday's which is our only day off but I still wanted to add a little color to the walls.  

From my wonderful Mom!!!! 

The base is pretty good about scheduling different events.  We ran a 5k Relay as a team and every other weekend they have 5k races going on.  On Wednesday they usually have some sort of fitness competition (wi-fit, ab cruch, bicep curl etc.).  On Tuesday's we always go to bingo and so far Danika (the dentist) has won once and Becky (the PA) thought she won but it was a false alarm.  So we're working on teaching her how to play!  Sometimes it feels like we are in a retirement community because the DFAC (cafeteria) is only open during certain times so we schedule our meals together and then schedule which games and social activities we are going to do that day.  Overall it isn't too bad so far though.  Hard to believe we've been here a month!  

Kuwaiti Sunset

Yesterday was our first mild sand storm and it was pretty awful.  By the end of the day there was sand in places you'd never imagine!!  Today is a little better though and it seems to have brought in some cool air so for that we are always thankful.