I made it home Friday night. After a couple of weeks of 12 hour days, needles, trauma lanes, and applied tourniquets, I am a little battered but the better for it.  Although ours was a shortened version of the course designed for soldiers fresh off deployment, all the good stuff was there.  I got lots of great new information on medical equipment and training, as well as lots of practice on using it.  Combat Medic training doesn’t pull punches.  Yes, we use dummies and lots of fake blood, but every IV is placed on fellow soldiers, Tourniquets are applied for real on classmates, and we play for real.  The culmination being a series of “lanes” where we have to treat patients under duress and combat simulation.  The only things we “missed out” on were classes on stuff we already knew from having used it daily in Iraq.

When I got home, my family had made me a welcome home cake and they were pretty excited to see me.  Unfortunately, I had barely put my bags down when the phone rang informing me that I had to be at work Monday at 0430 to cover ranges.  I am not even really needed there, but damned if I get a breather to turn in paperwork and travel documents. Then we had to go in yesterday morning because some Army General decided all the barracks needed to be inspected. Some soldier in Ft Bragg lived in a pig sty and his father blamed it on the army instead of making his son take responsibility, so we all had to come in on a Saturday to inspect our soldiers barracks.

Next week we have to start teaching CLS again, and I have to teach officers shortly thereafter.  We have almost no supplies for ourselves, let alone training, but thats not unusual in garrison, especially for low density MOSes. It never stops.  Thank God I have my family to take the edge away.

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