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.     

Training in California

On July 11th, 2010, after a tearful goodbye to my husband and puppy, I flew to California for a month of training before deployment.  We spent a week at NMPS Port Hueneme doing admin and getting issued new uniforms and tons of extra gear.

My new uniform

Then we took buses down to Camp Pendleton, CA where the actual training would take place.  It almost felt like coming home since I have lived there numerous times over my dad's military career.  And then I saw the seahuts where we would be living for the next 3 weeks....

I learned to love my little cot

Over the next three weeks we did a variety of training evolutions.  A lot of the training was hands on but we also had classroom training.  We learned how to set up a field hospital:

Some of the Nurse Corps officers in front our field hospital

We also practiced rolling over in a Humvee and successfully egressing from the vehicle.  This was kind of like being on a ride at a theme park except you were wearing about 40 extra pounds of gear and holding an M16 weapon in between your knees.

Getting ready to rollover

I'm setting up a perimeter after successfully egressing the HMMV.  They had smoke and heat inside the vehicles to simulate an actual explosion.

We also got to practice our shooting and then qualify on different weapons.  I qualified on the M9 and M4 which was surprisingly fun.

Me with my friend Nate at the gun range

We learned how to put on our MOPP Gear in under 8 minutes. This gear is to protect us in the case of a chemical or biological attack so we won't inhale deadly poison.  My partner and I were the fastest in our group! I know, who knew I would be so talented at donning protective gear.

The food at training was pretty awful.  We had 'field rats' or field rations.  This means they made one main dish and two sides and that was all there was to eat.  Needless to say there were not a lot of vegetarian options so I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly.  The Vegetarian MRE's were not bad actually and sometimes you would even get lucky and find candy in your MRE.  

Finally we finished training and on August 6th we headed to the airport to wait for our flight.  After 48 hours of traveling we arrived at our destination in Kuwait.  It was 2 am when we landed so we got to wear our stylish new glow-belts.  It's mandatory that we wear these between sunset and sunrise.  I'm still looking for the pink one.  

My friend Emily and I