Bloody Night

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Ebb and flow, ebb and flow.  We don't get business like ordinary, stateside hospitals, where one can expect an average number of admissions per day with a nice mean, median, and standard deviation.  Our days and nights are wholly unpredictable.

Last night we received yet another grouping of casualties.  The first set was gruesome, with the all-too-often seen bilateral lower extremity traumatic amputation patient.  Coalition forces this time, dismounted IED blast.  I presume this to be the case as it usually is.  This soldier had died enroute and was pronounced upon arrival, so on morning rounds the details were scant.  What we did hear is that this accident occurred in the dwindling days of his deployment.  There is something about that fact that leaves a gaping hole, an emptiness in one's stomach.

The randomness of the violence - when it occurs in ones' deployment, how it occurs (a nameless, faceless enemy - if you can call an IED an "enemy") - is a topic I have shared with my colleagues.  This is an odd war.  As one of my colleagues likes to note, these young men often come into the trauma bay with various amputations and injuries,  likely not having even seen the enemy.  The enemy probably didn't see the explosion that caused the trauma.  It seems so pointless from this perspective.  The flip side is the fact that seeing the enemy wouldn't make the tragedy of death or the morbidity of the trauma easier to live with.

Later on in the night we had another handful of trauma victims that came in from a helicopter crash.  I don't yet know the specifics but fortunately the injuries weren't extreme, and there were no deaths.