I'm Back

Sorry for the hiatus from posts, but I'm finally back.  Things had gotten into a rhythm here and I hadn't had much to write about for a while, but here's an update....
Things are pretty much still the same at work.  The schedule's not too busy as far as seeing patients goes, but I'm picking up some extra administrative and medic training projects to work on as well, so I'm keeping occupied.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we had a hospital volleyball tournament, which was alot of fun.  Thanks to some recent rain, the court was a bit quicksand-ish in places, but we managed to adapt.  We put together a team from my CSH to play against some of the other medical units here, as well as one team from one of the line units that's located on our FOB.  Most of the soldiers on my team had never really played volleyball, so they had to learn on the fly.  Thankfully, they were quick learners (and the first team we played was even worse than we were).  We ended up coming in 2nd place overall, with the team from the line unit coming back to beat us.  Not too bad for a team that'd never really played together before.
Otherwise, it's pretty much been life as usual.  I've been doing alot of reading, which has been a nice change.  When I was younger (i.e. pre-medical school), I was a voracious reader and used to go through a couple books a week.  As I had to study more for medical school, residency, and most recently my board exams, I seemed to run out of time for pleasure reading.  I was lucky if I could squeeze in 15 minutes before I went to bed at night.  (Having to go to work every day might have had something to do with that too... I don't know.)  Since arriving in Iraq, my reading has picked back up, which helps to fill in alot of the spare time that we've got.  I think I've already gone through 8 or 9 books since arrival in Kuwait.  Thankfully, I planned ahead while I was still back at Ft. Bragg though, so I've still got a stack of books waiting for me.  Some of the books that I've read recently have actually been really good.  A few weeks ago, I read "The Long Gray Line" by Rick Atkinson, which is a non-fiction book that tracks the members of West Point's class of 1966 through their time at West Point and then through the next 30 years both in and outside the Army.  It made for a fascinating look at American history over the last 40 years and was amazing how such a small group of men were involved in so many different newsworthy events.  I just finished "On Call in Hell" by Richard Jadick yesterday.  This book was kinda cool because I'd actually met the author, albeit briefly.  The author, who was a batallion surgeon for the Marines during the battle for Fallujah, was a Urology resident at the Medical College of Georgia when I was doing my residency at Eisenhower, so I met him when he was rotating through our Urology clinic.  The book's a fairly graphic description of what frontline medical care looked like at the peak of the war.  Thankfully, we haven't had to deal with anything like that so far.  Not to worry, it hasn't all been military non-fiction keeping me busy.  I read "The Lost Symbol" last week too.  It was a fun light read, although I still think that "Angels and Demons" is Dan Brown's best book by far.
So that's it for now.  I'm running into a bit of writer's block (Blogger's block?).  So, if there are any questions that you've got or anything you'd like me to write about, let me know and I'll see what I can do.