I don’t enjoy having conversations about Afghanistan with people who haven’t been there. It is not that I don’t want to share or help others understand the conflict or my experiences. My issue is that the stories I truly want people to understand are so visceral that words rarely due them justice. Especially when my words fall upon ears that don’t already have some basic connection to this conflict: the ears of someone who has never served in the armed forces, who has no relatives who have been to Afghanistan, who couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map. The majority of my time in Afghanistan was divided between working hard and doing absolutely nothing. There would be days at a time where I did not see a single patient. Being frustratingly bored is what I hated the most about my deployment, but being bored is not what has affected me. Being bored is not what inspired me to start sharing my experience on my blog. My clinic in Afghanistan was in a small concrete building near the runway on a small base close to the Pakistan border. In this building were other medical assets, to include two operating rooms and a team of surgeons. As such, the majority of seriously wounded Soldiers in our area of operations came to us for surgery. I got quite a bit of experience that year treating maxillofacial battle wounds, but unfortunately — along with the split lips, broken teeth, and facial lacerations — came the double amputations, exsanguinations (bleeding to death), and other variations of modern battle wounds that the American public has yet to see the long term effects of. As a dentist, I see bleeding and pain on a routine basis, but I am not accustomed to the level of violence and trauma that a general surgeon is. To me the images of wounded American Soldiers stand out profoundly, while to a surgeon they are likely routine and unmemorable. I hope to never again see the effects of such violence again in my … Continue reading Watching an American Soldier Die