Father Time

Time is a strange and nebulous thing. Sometimes it passes slowly, and sometimes it
passes so quickly that I can hardly keep up. While on deployment, the
first week of training in Georgia and the first week in Bagram passed
with miserable slowness. Once my feet were wet in the clinic and ICU, though,
time began to accelerate and accelerate such that I can hardly believe I
have already been here three weeks!

The act of telling time in a war zone is somewhat nontraditional. For one thing,
there are two (or three, or four) sets of clocks in most rooms. One is
inevitably set to "zulu" time, and in fact all of our official
correspondence - including patient records - is communicated in zulu
time. The other clocks tells local time (which is zulu plus 4.5 hours
... and whoever decided that it would be a good idea to add
four-and-a-HALF hours to standard time must have been smoking crack).
The third or fourth clock may be Iraq time or eastern time depending on
the tendencies and desires of the occupants.

When in clinic, I pay attention to only three times: (1) 0700 when I
report to the clinic for duty; (2) 1200 when the lunch hour starts; and
(3) 1700 when the clinic closes. There are very few other times of
significance; when I get hungry, I eat, and when I get tired, I sleep.
It's just that simple.

Obviously the ICU is a bit different. I really only care about 2 times: (1) 0630 when bedside rounds begin, and (2) the time when my replacement is supposed to arrive. Other than that, I go to nut med (nutritional medicine) when I'm hungry, I sleep on the call room sofas when I'm tired, I watch movies or check email in the "doc box" when I need to. It's also very simple.

Since every day is (basically) like the next, it's sometimes hard to
keep track of the day of the week or the week of the month. If I didn't
have to write the date on the patient sick slips or my ICU orders, I would probably never know the date! Without looking at a calendar, though, there are several
ways to monitor the passage of time and keep track of how long I've been
here (and, more importantly, how much longer I will be here). For
example:

- Surf 'n' Turf dinner is every Friday at the DFAC; I know I've been
here three weeks since I've had crab and lobster three times. (NOT A JOKE! We really do have steak, crab, lobster, fried shrimp, crab cakes, gumbo, and lobster bisque every Friday. We even trek all the way across the base to the "Aviation DFAC" since they have the best Surf 'n' Turf around!)

- Mondays are the day for "malaria" and for "mask". Everyone in
Afghanistan should take malaria pills, and some people take them weekly.
It's easy to figure out how many weeks left on deployment by counting
remaining pills, or qualitatively by seeing the bottle become more and more empty. We also have to check our gas mask and its accoutrements every Monday and record the preventative maintenance
undertaken. You know you've been here a long time when the preventative
maintenance flowsheet is full.

- Similarly, I have a $0.99 Wal-Mart standard medication holder which holds 28 days of medication. Every time I fill it, I know another month has passed. I just re-filled it for the first time yesterday, which means that today is day 30 of deployment.

- My roommmates and I have barracks maintenance (affectionately termed
"Cinderella duty") every 9 days; when I see the magnetic sign on my door
in the morning, I know another 9 days have passed.

- For me, Thursdays are a special day since I get to skype with Matthew.
My mom and dad care for him on Thursdays, and when he's at their house,
we try to talk, sing, play itsy-bitsy spider and pat-a-cake, and
generally spend some time together. I look forward to Thursdays for
that reason, so every time a Thursday rolls around and I talk with Matt,
I know another week has passed. (By the way, Charles and Shannon are
helping to get skype set up in Glendora so that Matt and I can talk more
often. Now if we could just get James to skype ....)

So here's to Father Time, whether he lives in London, Baghdad, Bagram, or Glendora. :-) Wherever he is, I hope that he continues to make time fly!