wearing thin

It is getting to that point of the deployment where I am like 'I am done already'. The fact is that I am only here for emergencies, which thankfully there have been few. Thus, I am not really challenged medically and I feel like my skills are dwindling. I have had plenty of time to read medical resources, but there is only so much of that one can tolerate.

You add the lack of professional stimulation to an environment that is cold, sandy and flat and then you mix in the fact that I have no privacy and you get one demotivated allergist. Of course, I could have gone to the Army as an augment as did one of my allergist colleagues. He is getting killed with patients because it is him and one Army medical tech to care for over 800 individuals. On top of that, a bunch of his unit are Army reservists who were not properly medically pre-screened. He has had to send home quite a few (incontinence, neuralgias, long history of GI bleed...). At least he has a pseudo office. I get a third of a picnic table as a desk and get to share a phone and computer with 14 corpsmen.

Let me pause for a second, because I am almost wishing that I was back at NMCSD seeing patients and that would cut into my workouts and my guitar practice that I do enjoy here.

Naahhhh, I am still going to complain. We get taskings to send corpsmen to different places and usually this requires that we send someone who is up to speed and motivated. Thus, we have sent off most of our good corpsmen. The ones we have left in the BAS are either anti-social (for instance you say hi shipmate and you get back a blank stare with no vocalization) or they move like a slug, or they are under investigation (can't divulge details).

Lastly, I want to give you an example of the types of people/situations that make my day entertaining. Yesterday I had an urgent message that a SSGT needed to know particular information about a Marine being flown out. I got back to him that I had already briefed the CO on the situation hours ago. He responded that he needed an e-mail telling him the information so he could brief the CO. I echoed again that I had already briefed the CO. However, he was going on protocol that he needed an e-mail and he intended to brief the CO on the matter. It did not matter that I verbally told the CO more info than I had e-mailed to the SSGT, he needed to brief the CO, it was his job. Kind of a small example of how government runs anything.