A physician assistant is a medical professional who is able to examine and treat patients under the supervision of a physician. The training we receive is what I like to call, an abbreviated version of medical school. We don’t have the depth of knowledge the physicians have, however, we have a sound knowledge of how to treat the common conditions in medicine. I have also received training and certification as an Advanced Trauma Life Support and Advanced Cardiac Life Support provider. My responsibilities are the same as a physician in an emergency department.
I work in a medical section with a team of army medics in a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Afghanistan near a few small villages with old mountains for a view. The area is very dry and dusty. By the way, it gets hot here. The highest I saw on a thermometer showed 52.6 degrees Celsius. When the wind blows it’s like opening the oven door and checking how the roast is doing. Thankfully, we get to stay inside our tents with the fans blowing.
The day starts early for me as I wake up early to call Shelley, my fiancé. These days we have the internet, Skype, satellite phones and cell phones. So communication is far better than when I was a young private in the field. Those days we had to wait in line ups for a few hours to use a pay phone.
Being able to chat with her regularly goes a long way for both of us. We talk about each other’s day and I get to hear her lovely voice. My days are pretty calm so I don’t have much news for her. I love hearing about her day and what is going on. In my eyes, our wives are amazing. They are at home alone working a job, looking after the children, the house, the bills, the things that break down, the pets and through all that, still look gorgeous. They are amazing, and so is Shelley.
After the conversation, I prepare and send two reports that are required every day to let our chain of command (the bosses) know about the patients we saw the previous day. Then I go for my workout. One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years is the benefits of working out regularly. It helps me get rid of my belly, it manages my frustrations, helps me sleep better and I just generally feel more positive. Then I go for a shower and shave.
Breakfast is next. We are very lucky in the Canadian Forces. Our cooks are great. They don’t get to work in a gourmet kitchen, but they sure do good work. They work out of kitchen trailers which we go into to receive our food and then go to the mess tent to eat. Our breakfast consists of a choice between eggs, bacon, sausages, sometimes pancakes or French toast, cereals juice or coffee. Our lunches are cold cut sandwiches, lettuce and tomato slices for our sandwiches, cups of soup and noodles, little bags of trail mix. But supper is a cooked meal, with meat, veggies, rice or potatoes and dessert.
My day consists of being in the medical tent waiting for patients or trauma.
Most days are pretty quiet. I see on average six-eight patients a day. Some other FOBs are busier as they are larger and have been around for quite some time. They see both more trauma and patients than we do. However, on
occasion, we do get busy.
On one occasion a little girl was brought to us by her older brother in a wheelbarrow. He walked about six kms pushing that wheel barrow through the dirt and sand. He was about 11 years old and the girl was six years old. Two weeks prior to seeing us, she was a passenger in a car which was involved in an accident at the Kandahar Air Field. She sustained a fracture pelvis, a fractured right femur and a burned left lower leg. She was treated at the Role 3 hospital and discharged. You may not realize how life for the average Afghan family is like here. But basically, they’re standard of living is quite a bit lower than ours is in Canada. She was unable to receive ongoing care and therefore, her left lower leg injury developed into quite the infection.
Our policy is to only treat injuries that threaten life, eyesight, arms or legs. Her leg wound and infection was getting pretty advanced so I decided to treat her. Cleaning an infected wound is a painful procedure for the patient. We did the best we could and got the job done. Her brother brought her back every day in that wheelbarrow. I taught him how to clean and change her dressing so that he could do it every evening at home. After seven days they started coming every second day three times and then a week latter to make sure that she was fine.
So she did heal. The last time they came by, the soldiers had a few gifts for her and her brother. It was like Christmas for them.
Afternoons here are spent working inside and dealing with the heat. At the start of the tour I used to spend time teaching or reviewing trauma and clinical skills with the medics. I would also spend a fair bit of time studying medical text, however, as the tour moves along, I find myself watching movies and television series on my lap top.
Patients continue to come in regularly and I take every advantage to coach our young medics.
Evenings are nice as the temperature cools down; we spend more time outside the tent socializing. I hit the sack fairly early between 9 and 10 in the evening so that I can wake up early and catch up with Shelley.
