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I will always remember this day as if was just yesterday. I was sitting out on the loading dock at my then duty assignment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl Germany. It was a beautiful, calm but unusually calm day. I could hear all the planes and helicopter landing over at Ramstein AFB, for a slit second I thought it was very unusal to suddenly hear so many aircraft engines all at once. As I returned inside one of the civillian supervisors was running frantically up the...read more
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I entered the army in June, 2006, and went through the same basic training required for all enlisted soldiers. From there, I went through specialized training in emergency and battlefield medicine, and was ultimately named a combat medic. After graduating Advanced Individual Training, I was assigned to Fort Riley, KS. On 4 February, 2007, I arrived at Fort Riley and was promptly assigned to Third Brigade, First Armored Division. The unit was later "reflagged,"...read more
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Earlier this month I had a chance to address a large audience from the AMEDD (Army Medical Department) in San Antonio. We had about 100 Dental Corps personnel present and about 200 medical/hospital personnel. It was a great opportunity to speak with some of our dental leadership and other colleagues. Patient safety is a very important subject within the AMEDD. The goal is to be proactive in identifying trends or behaviors that could cause an adverse outcome for a...read more
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I started ILE (formerly known as CGSC) yesterday at Ft. Belvoir. This is one of the satellite "in residence" locations which lasts about 4 months. There are 128 people there total, and we are broken down into groups of 16. It seems that everyone here is high speed, with almost everyone having at least a master's degree. Since I will be going "Army stuff" for the next 4 months, I decided to post some of my bigger cases from my 2 year...read more
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The officers in our clinic recently had an officer professional development (OPD) event at Davidson Army Airfield across from Ft. Belvoir. The purpose of an OPD is to build Esprit de Corps and help to train officers to become future leaders. For this event we scheduled a tour of the airfield to learn about some other Army units here at Ft. Belvoir and what they do. We began by visiting one of the hangers that house the Blackhawks that have been converted to fly VIPs....read more
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As the US presence draws down, there are certainly still enemies of the United States in Iraq. They still don't like us, and they still would love to do us harm. Just don't tell that to my family. I generally don't worry too much about my own safety while I'm here: the threat is fairly small, and most attacks are against Iraqi Security Forces (Federal Police, local Iraqi Police, and Iraqi Army, respectively) ...but the threat is still...read more
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What an exciting afternoon. Around 2 pm I had just seated a patient and we were talking about what we were going to do during the procedure. All of a sudden it sounded to me like a helicopter was beginning to land right outside the clinic - things were shaking a little bit and I thought it was rotor wash. I couldn't understand where a helicopter would land since we are surrounded by residential housing - maybe I was thinking there was a VIP that had broken a tooth :) As...read more
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I have stayed busy for the past several months, and am finally blogging again. There isn't much to blog about in the present, but there's plenty of catching up to do. At the end of June, I went home for 2 weeks on R&R Leave from Baghdad. I had been telling my wife that it would be another month before I came home; she was surprised to see me, to say the least. We had a wonderful time, and then I came back to Iraq. When I got back to...read more
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I haven't talked about what I've done in the clinic very much - I think the reason is things have been so busy. With the new leadership there have been changes and new adjustments. With Walter Reed closing down and the summer move season we have many new dentists that have begun working with us. We have 3 new military dentists and 2 new civilian dentists. Finding room for everyone has been an ongoing project. In the clinic it seems like a...read more
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