Continuing Medical Treatment

The Landstuhl Orthopedic Department decided to go with Option #1 (read last post) and sent me to the United States for surgery.  On 17 July I was on a plane from Ramstein to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  I've been at WRAMC now for a week.

The "campus", as it's referred to here, is a very nice facility.  It actually feels like a college campus here...a college campus of medical treatment.  The building structures are very colonial and antiqued on the outside, except for the state-of-the-art gymnasium and the main hospital.  The streets are narrow with slow moving traffic and the sidewalks are continuously congested with wounded warriors that are trying to run their daily lives on their own.  There are always activities on the installation for the wounded warriors and their family members.

The wife and I are staying in a mini-hotel room while I'm currently inprocessing and attending medical appointments.  It's a small room with a shared bathroom, but has all of the amenities of a normal hotel.  It's a nice place to come back to after appointments, formations or meetings to get some sleep - attempting to get back on a normal sleep schedule.  

There is one organizational aspect to the process for Wounded Warriors that I do not like very much even though I know that it is probably necessary to have in order to keep tabs on soldiers.  This aspect that I do not like is the attempt to keep military processes and unit structure within the ranks of the Wounded Warriors.  I am here for medical treatment - to get my body fixed so be on my way to continue my job.  So far, since I have arrived to this installation, I have attended one appointment where I consulted with a doctor.  The rest of my time has been attending unit formations at 0800 and inprocessing the "company" as if I were a permanent party, cadre soldier.  I really just want the medical treatment, the recovery, the physical therapy, and then be kicked out of here to do my job.  I almost have the impression that they are settling me in here for the long hall...I don't want that.  However, I can see how they need the military structure in this medical environment.  There are a LOT of wounded warriors here receiving medical treatment and the cadre need to be able to keep tabs on them, maintain discipline and make the soldiers feel like they are still a part of something.

My next medical consultation is tomorrow (Friday) with the Sports Orthopedics Department.  I'm sure I will have to conduct all of the same painful movement and resistance exercises so he can say he saw the same thing that the past 5 doctors have seen since I left my unit.  Tomorrow; however, should be the day that I find out about surgery on both my arm and shoulder (labrum tear in my shoulder discovered in the MRI from Landstuhl).  The wife and I are keeping our fingers crossed.  She and I have mentioned the word definites a lot in the past week.  We haven't heard any definites from anyone over here as of yet.  We thought we had heard definites in Landstuhl and Baghdad; however, each medical facility has their own opinion.  Landstuhl sent me here for surgery, but Walter Reed may say there is no need for surgery.  There is one thing I can say about the medical care in the Army...the continuity and trust between physicians just plain stinks.  

So, until tomorrow the wife and I will be biting our time finding things to do in the mean time while our son sits in Ohio waiting for his parents to come home.  I still have yet to see the little guy since I've arrived back in the United States.  I'm back in the States but still feel pseudo-deployed...maybe that's why I'm still receiving my combat incentives!

Transitioning

I have gone through many different transitions from the 28th of June to present. Transitions between locations, transitions between way of life, and transitions between environments (both weather and work environments). My first transition was my travel from JSS Loyalty to the 10th CSH at the International Zone on the 28th of June. I had flown by UH-60 from one location to the other in about 5 minutes in the middle of the night. It was then that my life changed drastically.

At JSS Loyalty I was conducted mounted combat patrol operations through some of the worst parts of Baghdad, Iraq and advising Iraqi National Police on a daily basis. I had gone from that fast-paced way of life to then living at a hospital within the International Zone. Normally life at the hospital is a short-lived experience because you get diagnosed and are then on your way either back to your duty location or off to somewhere else for more treatment. Unfortunately for me, when I arrived to the hospital Baghdad had gotten socked in with dust storms for 9 days; preventing me from being able to go anywhere. So, outside of my two doctor appointments, cumulatively accounting for 10 minutes of my stay at the hospital, I was trapped at the hospital without anything to do. My life at the hospital consisted of checking in at the front desk at 0800 and then finding something to do for the rest of the day which either consisted of watching movies in a makeshift movie theater, playing video games, checking my Facebook account on the internet, or calling my wife on the phone. My stress level increased drastically not because of working too hard, but going from working hard to doing absolutely nothing with my day - mindless, boring days. I could hardly stand it! I was finally able to leave the hospital at the International Zone once the weather cleared, but since I needed to go to Germany for an MRI I was on another UH-60 to Balad so I could hop on a fixed-wing aircraft to take us to Germany.

I arrived in Balad on 7 July 2009, once again, in the middle of the night. After arrival and checking I was given Percocet for the pain that I was having in my arm and shoulder. This changed the dynamics of my days greatly as taking this narcotic caused me to become drowsy and incoherent. Although we were only at Balad for one full day before heading to Germany it seemed like eternity at that location. We were not allowed to leave the building we were in except for this little patio on the back of the building if you were a smoker. Needless to say, if I was not sleeping caused by a drug-induced stuper, I was outside smoking under the sunlight and "fresh air". If anything during this deployment has felt like a prison it was this place. That's saying a lot because just being on this deployment feels prison-like. Early in the morning on 9 July 2009 we boarded a C-17 plane headed for Germany.

We arrived in Germany in the late morning on 9 July. We, once again, had to get checked in and attend briefings about all the places that supported us and the routine of events for the Wounded Warriors, which I am now embarrassingly considered. Germany, for all of us, was a big shock to our bodies because when we left Balad it was peaking at 120 degrees during the day; Germany's high thus far has been 65 degrees and rainy. I have been wearing cold weather clothes everyday that I've been here because my body just can't get used to the giant temperature change. At this point in time my mind and body have gotten adjusted to the slow pace of life so I am not nearly as anxious as I was at the hospital in the International Zone. I am living in motel-room style quarters which is a lot more pleasant than the bays of 40 men at the previous locations and my medications were cut in half because of the adverse effects that two percocet every 4 hours was having on my brain. The level of care I'm receiving at Landstuhl is much, much greater than all of the locations previous to this (the previous location's combined consultation, consisting of four different doctors and three different locations, consisted of 10 minutes). Additionally, we are not quite on lockdown at this location. We have formations in the morning and have to sign in at night, but we are allowed passes on the weekends and have opportunities to see the sights of Germany. Yesterday my roommate and I traveled to Frankfurt, Germany to sightsee, shop and eat authentic German food. It was a nice day and we didn't feel like prisoners in our own profession.

The final decision of what will happen with me will be made on Wednesday of this week. There are going to be three options I feel that can be made - 1) Be sent to the United States for surgery and continuing care, 2) Receive surgery here at Landstuhl and THEN get sent home for continuing care or 3) Be told that I don't need surgery and get sent back to theater to finish out my deployment. The hardest of those three is obviously the latter but for different reasons than you might think. It won't be hard to deal with the dust, sand and hot weather...I'm used to that. What will be difficult is readjusting my mind back to the high operational tempo and fast-paced life that comes with combat. I will have been stagnant for three weeks without ever having to worry about work-related tasks. It will be extremely difficult to get back into the mindset needed for combat operations. We will see what happens when that time comes.