Day 37: The Neverending Project

Posted by: Cris

While talking to Emilie tonight, I mentioned that not much happened today...mostly because, of course, I was working on the neverending fence project most of the day (and intermittently watching football games - Congrats to Auburn for extending Tim's dream season into the National Championship game...I'm hopeful the Buckeyes are still headed for a BCS game tomorrow when the match-ups are announced). Though I am making progress, at no step along the way has there not been an unexpected obstacle. Today, I actually got the fence set up and put my rigged up fence stretcher on it and went at it. Of course, it wasn't long until as I was stretching the fence, the old posts to which my end posts we attached started to rotate in on the single concrete anchor bolt they were affixed with. The bad news was I had to take 2 hours to head back to Home Depot (with a side trip to Costco while we were in the neighborhood). The good news is that now I know how to put in concrete anchors (hadn't ever done that one before) and now the posts are so strong I'll be able to stretch that fence tight enough to tune it like a guitar string.

The girls of course spent the whole time playing around the Koi pond and trying to lose my tools. Why have I been obsessing so much about getting the fence project done? I am dying to get my dogs here and the fence has to be finished before I can do that. My mom keeps sending me these pictures of the dogs and I figure I have to get that fence finished and get them here ASAP because they are getting totally spoiled:
And Sherpa and Denali LOOOVE the snow (of which there is now apparently alot in Ohio):

Summit obviously would rather just hunker down between a couple of pillows for a warm, toasty nap:

So, I'm optimistic that come the end of January, things will be ready for my pack to make the long flight to Hawaii and start enjoying their new home.

Before signing off tonight, I have to note that tonight I sat around with my friend and fellow MMA fan, Bret and watched 2 different fightcards on competing channels and the highlight of the night was seeing my favorite fighter of all time, Dan Henderson get a HUGE win via knockout. Hendo is getting up there in years and nearing the end of his career so I don't know how many more of these there will be before he retires so tonight was SWEET! Emilie was on Skype with me at the time so I literally held my computer so that she could see and hear the fight on the screen and watched it with me. Ahhh, technology.

Since all the pictures from today's post are from my phone, I couldn't help pulling this one off and posting it as well:

Nova is just a few weeks old here and this was one of her first recorded smiles...Juneau was still waiting for her daddy to come to Vietnam and bring her home and these 2 sisters didn't even know how much they were missing by not having each other around yet.

starting to look a lot like christmas :)

posted by: emilie

in the last couple of days i have recieved THREE awesome, christmas-y care packages! Thank you Aunt D, Aunt Cheryl, and Denise!!!! you guys are the best! As soon as I got Aunt D's care package i could tell it was packed up by a Stickley. I couldn't believe how much she had tidily fit into a flat rate mailer! A christmas tree, a nativity set, a candle, a pair of socks, and a coffee mug...and that wasn't even everything!!! haha!
Here is a "Self-portrait" of my little Christmas decoration in my room :) awesome!! It really helps make the christmas season seem more real now that i have my own decorations!!

In other, less exciting news, I forgot that i had left out a "Sticky Mouse Trap" on my floor the first day i moved in, before i had real mouse traps, and yesterday morning i woke up to a tiny mouse stuck to the trap. Those things are torturous!!! the little guy was still alive and wiggling and squeaking. It was awful. One of the guys from the other building "handled" the situation for me, because i just couldn't bear it. So, moral of the story is to never, ever use the sticky traps.

In the days following the "mass casuality" (this is the term we use to describe any medical scenario that requires use of all our resources and staff) several little side stories have been shared. O neg blood is very rare, and unfortunately, the most injured soldier was O neg. The "walking blood bank" had been activated, but there just weren't that many O neg soldiers to donate, so we started calling around to notify some of the nearby posts that we may be in need of donors. The Special Forces compound is nearby (A couple of minutes by vehicle), so we called over to let them know we might need them, and to remain "on hold" to transport guys over. Well, about 5 minutes later there was a whole bus full of special forces guys coming through the gate. apparently when they heard that there were injured soldiers who might need blood they loaded up every o neg guy and said they were coming to just sit outside the aid station to be ready when they were needed. these guys are really amazing.

Day 36: 20% Done

Posted by: Cris



On the march toward a theoretical 180 days, day 36 means we've survived 20% of our time apart. Not too bad...



Lately, the girls are into playing games where they end up sitting up on the back of the couch in some sort of train formation - but the game is never the same. This time it was "we're riding on Dumbo" Tonight we made another attempt at Friday night fireworks. Currently, we are batting .500 on whether we actually make it to the fireworks or just end up having dinner with the gang. Tim contends that Beth is just using the fireworks as the excuse to get everyone together and go out to dinner and whether or not we actually make it to the fireworks is inconsequential. :)

These four have become thick as thieves. There is currently an injunction on the four of them being allowed in Tim's house at the same time because somehow, every time they are there, Melody's room ends up looking like a cyclone went through. Tim has plans to set up a webcam in her room the next time they come over and try to witness how they manage to basically get every single piece of every single toy out and spread around the room so quickly.

Melody and Juneau were really working hard and concentrating on something here...I think they were navigating a maze on their placement.

Try to guess what they are doing in these 2 pictures:

They are actually pretending to be cats with their crayon whiskers.


Nova and Alyssa were buddies tonight...

It was really funny because last friday night when we went to the fireworks, right before we were leaving (during the musical chairs with the barrier poles game), Juneau and Alyssa got into a little fit over something and Juneau did her thing where she yells at the person she's mad at (more like a roar or growl). I got on her a bit about it at the time but that was it. I hadn't given it a second thought since then. Tonight, as soon as Alyssa got there with her mom and dad and sat down at the table, Juneau excitedly said "Hi Alyssa", paused a second and said "I'm sorry I yelled at you yesterday" (yesterday is anything in the past).

Tim and I are surrounded by girls in our lives...but they are so cute!

Tim hoisted this drink with cheers "to Emilie"

I'll finish off this post with the best picture of the night (not taken by me - credit to Beth):
Nova and Alyssa win the cuteness award.

update

thank you so much to friends and family who have commented and emailed. today has been a better day.
they stopped announcing over the intercom that O neg blood donors were needed at about 12:30 a.m. (about 7.5 hours after the blast). i was hoping this meant that the soldiers had been stabilized. This morning i talked to the surgeons and found that all 5 guys had made it through the night, and had been evacuated to the next level of care. They still have a long road to recovery, and most of them will have irreversible injuries, but they are all alive.
thank you for the care, concern, and prayers for these young men.

Day 35: Hopefully not many like this...

Posted by: Cris

I am very thankful tonight for all of the prayers and well wishes people sent out today after Emilie's post. It turned into a very somber day for me as well after sitting with Emilie on skype and feeling so incredibly helpless that I couldn't reach 7000 miles through the screen as she was crying and hold her. I hope there aren't too many more days like this for Emilie. But, my wife is incredibly strong and I know with the help of everyone's prayers she will be fine.

Sitting in my office and trying to concentrate after I talked to Emilie today was tough so I snuck out a couple hours early and came home and worked on the fence and cleaning the gutters...manual labor is always a good distraction.

But, all day I was thinking about how much God has blessed Em and I over the last 5 years since we got married (has it been that long?) As a result, I couldn't resist posting this picture of what I my girl looked like when we started dating...How could I resist that smile? I also figured that today was a good day to give the girls these dog tags that Emilie made for the girls with a picture of each of them with mommy.

To lighten the mood of the day, I'll refer you to yesterday's post and the comments section. Now, Emily is one of those people who I've never met but is a long time follower of our blog. She is the daughter of my dad's friend and she actually lives in Germany. In response to my ranting about German candy yesterday, she commented in part: "It has to be the Haribo color-rado mix, which is truly awful."

This comment totally made my day because sure enough:

...Emily was spot on. :)

I'll end the day on this incredibly cute note: Every night when I go down to bed, obviously I stop and peek in on the girls. Last night, this was waiting for me: (See Juneau too?)
Zoom out for the total cuteness:

the real deal...

posted by: emilie

tomorrow will be 3 weeks since i offically arrived at my new duty station. it has been a relatively eventful 3 weeks, with the initial attack on the post, the emergency ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and the earthquake. but until tonight i hadn't really, truly felt the effect of being at war. i'm hoping that it will be therapeutic somehow to write about it. i'm hoping that it will help me to never forget what these incredibly brave americans have sacrificed. i hope that when i feel frustrated with medicine, and being in the army, and dealing with difficult patients i can think about the fact that all of the school and the training helped me prepare for this moment...and i can remember that today i actually helped people.

I work in the Aid Station. we normally see the minor stuff...coughs, cold, runny noses and sprained ankles. The neighboring building is the FST (Forward Surgical Team). That is where all the big trauma goes. They often get 1 or 2 patients at a time who were involved in blasts, or gunshots.

Tonight while i was seeing my usual "sick call" patients one of the nurses ran over to ask if i could come to the FST. They were expecting 5 severely injured soldiers, and needed every available hand. I told all the coughers and sneezers to come back in the morning, and ran over to the FST. We recieved a radio message that said we had 11 minutes until the casualities would arrive.

The FST is a well-oiled machine. The Colonel in charge (a general surgeon) quickly assigned each of us to a bed. The sickest patient would be attended by the anesthesia provider and the general surgeon. The next 2 would go to the two orthopedic surgeons, the 4th would go to the trauma-trained physician's assistant, and i would get #5. We each gathered around our stations and started getting our equipment together.

It tends to be the trend that the trauma we receive is not quite as severe as we anticipate, and so i expected a few broken bones and that kind of thing. When they brought the first guy in i knew it was going to be the real deal. He was young...early 20's...and a big guy. the medics were struggling to get the stretcher in to the building. He was completely unresponsive, and his tibia was literally sticking out of his leg at a 45 degree angle. The team quickly intubated him and started getting to work to identify his wounds and stop the bleeding.

After that the stretchers kept coming, and every young soldier was in critical condition. Apparently the enemy had mounted an IED (bomb) to the bottom of their vehicle while it was stopped, and when it detonated it demolished the vehicle (which is incredibly rare...usually the roadside bombs barely make a dent in our big, sturdy tanks).

The soldier that ended up on my table was fortunatley at least alert. A very proficient medic had applied a tourniquet to his leg to stop the hemorrhage from the wound that was created when his tibia tore through his skin. His other leg was also grossly disfigured, but at least no bones were sticking out. He remained stable while i found his various injuries and cared for them, and in the long run i think he will do just fine (After a lengthy recovery).

After i stabilized my patient i checked to see how i could help with the 4 other soldiers who were more critically injured. I spent the evening doing whatever i could....i bagged each of the intubated patients while the surgeons worked to figure out who needed immediate surgery. there was not much i could do to help, but i prayed for each man as i squeezed the bag every 3 seconds. I helped with some minor surgical procedures, and bandaged up injuries that were so gruesome i can't even write about them. Every once in awhile i would look around at these soldiers and choke back tears when i thought about their families who were about to recieve terrible news.

when i walked over to the aid station to get some meds from our pharmacy i saw a line of guys standing outside the aid station, and wrapping nearly all the way around it. I suddenly got very anxious that all these guys had been injured as well, but when i asked the medic she told me they were the "walking blood bank" that was activated to provide whole blood for the casualties. I had to duck into the pharmacy as my eyes filled with tears when i realized that all of these guys were pitching in to help save the injured soldiers. Their blood would literally be taken directly from their bodies, and administered to the soldiers in the building next door. (for the non-medical type this is incredibly rare...usually the blood gets drawn and then screened, and then filtered and separated into various components. in the non-war scenario it is almost never indicated to give blood directly from one person to another)

I've seen some sad things in the 5 years since i graduated from medical school. I have certainly become numb to many of the situations that we face as physicians. but tonight it was unbelievably real. unbelievably sad.

as i am completing this post there is an announcement over the intercom for soldiers with O neg blood to report to the Aid station immediately. this is 6 hours following the blast, which means that the injured men have not yet been stabilized. please take a moment to say a prayer for these brave warriors and their families. if they make it through tonight, they still have a long road ahead of them.

Day 34: Pez!!

Posted by: Cris

As some of you have seen in pictures of our house, we have a beautiful grove of bamboo out in front that is super tall with 2-3" diameter bamboo poles. I actually love this part of our landscaping even though keeping the bamboo from overtaking the entire hillside takes some persistent monitoring. But, after a nice rain and wind storm last night, I wasn't so fond of the bamboo when I came out to my car this morning and found it almost engulfed by this: But, it was 6:00 am and I wasn't going to mess with it then so I waded through the branches enough to get in the car and decided to deal with it when I got home. Fortunately, not even bamboo is a match for a reciprocating saw but it still was a pain in the butt to clean up this afternoon.

Today we opened another present from Grandma and Grandpa Stickley's care package and found another of the girls' recent favorites - PEZ!

They were particularly thrilled with the Tinkerbell Pez dispensers - especially Nova.

As soon as I could get the Pez actually loaded (they are hard to load), they set to work on unloading them.

As you would expect, they don't just eat them a little at a time - they keep opening the top and popping them out one after the next until they are gone.

They don't look like much now, but we are up to 4 pineapples growing on the lanai.

There was one important component of Emilie's care package that I forgot to mention that I must include to day if for no other reason than to give my native-born German Aunt Wally a hard time: 2 packages of gummie candies from Germany that Emilie picked up on her way over. One of them was a German version of my much beloved Haribo gummie toads...so, even though the packaging was in German, I can deduce what it all says and I can't wait to eat them. The other package was something that I can only assume is a gummie version of trail mix - it has normal gummie bears in there that taste regular enough but then there are several other things in there that are really pretty disgusting. Nova put one in her mouth and immediately spit it out accompanied by the nastiest face ("I dont like it"). I couldn't help but think back to 5th grade when, for a class project I did on Germany I had to bake these German Anise cookies that were far from what I'd consider tasting like a cookie.

I'll have to have Aunt Wally translate the packaging but I can only assume that is says something like: "Don't eat this candy...it is gross." But, I guess when you consider that David Hasselhoff is a pop music idol in Germany (which further proves my point: "Germans love David Hasselhoff"), it is not surprising that the standard for candy might be a little lower as well :)