12 JAN 2008 So much to see

"It is amazing how every new day brings a new experience. As I walk through my paces here, I feel like it is just more of the same, but every new patient experience or visit with tactical forces is a new world so far from my quiet little practice back home.

Just now I finished a burn operation on a 10-year-old boy. He was so calm and brave in the emergency department before we sedated him for surgery. He and his father had been in town when a VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device) exploded next to them. I examined him and found a whitish silver pallor to his skin. I have seen patients burned with white phosphorus, or "Willy Peter" as the the troops call it, and it is dangerous because it continues to burn int the tissue until you cut every trace of it away. But this was different. I rubbed it and a little came off on my finger. It was silver paint. I went to talk to the boy's father. His sweater and sandals were covered with the same silver paint. He said that when the truck detonated, there was an expanding cloud of silver that emanated from it. Everything around it had been coated. We washed the boy's burns, removed fragments of metal from his face and legs, and dressed his wounds. Our Ophthalmologist C. looked in his eyes and Otorhinolaryngologist R. (or for those of you who don't want to say Otorhinolaryngologist, Head-Hole Doctor R.) looked in his breathing and swallowing tubes to see if there was any injury."
Made a Difference