Dandy in Afghanistan

Happy Thursday Gang,

A couple nights ago the Egyptian hospital on base brought in a Local National who had fallen from a date tree. This was at seven in the evening and the fall had occur ed at eight o’clock that morning. He was an older, thin, frail looking man probably in his sixties with a full salt and peppered beard and longer white hair.

He was in poor shape with broken ribs and air in his left lung (pneumo thorax). When we were working on him he started spitting dates out of his mouth and almost hit the ER doctor in the face and hit one of the ER techs in the arm. We rolled him on his side and one of the surgeon’s said “will someone do a blind finger sweep and clear his airway?” The ER doctor at the patient’s head said “no, don’t do that, he’s got sharp little pointy teeth.”

They ER doctor put a chest tube in him and we got him stabilized enough to bring him to the CT scanner. He was squirmy and I had to hold his left hand down from getting into the sterile field where they were doing the chest tube. It was just the funniest thing that he had all of this dates in his mouth and he started spitting them. I don’t think he was trying to be mean and intentionally spit on the doctor.

Anyways, I thought you’d enjoy that little story about the date muncher.

Dandy 147.3 miles to go- can you believe I’m half way to 300 miles Aaron