wrote when I was in Cambodia. Many of you will have seen it before,
but to some it will be new.
You can see more of it here:
http://thewayitwere.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
This was the second Update I wrote from Cambodia and it was at the
half-way point of that deployment. I think you'll see that a lot of
the feelings are similar, even though that was not a war-zone
deployment and it was only about 2 weeks. Deployments have a familiar
rhythm, where ever they might be.
Have you ever had a really bad hangover? Have you ever had a really
bad hangover and then had to sit in oppressive heat and take blood
pressures of smelly people all day? How about this one, have you ever
had a really bad hangover, had to spend the day taking smelly blood
pressures and then had the tent you are under collapse over you?
Welcome to my Friday!
Thursday night was a celebration of sorts. Dr. J, our veddy British
doctor, was leaving us on Friday morning and we were sending him off
in Cambodian high-style. By which I mean, there were almost clean
plates to eat off of and people who had had the foresight to bring
their own booze from home broke it out. The misty, finger stained
glasses at the restaurant were the perfect counterpoint to our fine
Scotch whiskey, and in true Navy style we shot the two fingers of 22
year aged Glen Fiddich. Then the good Dr. broke out his private stash
of Bacardi and we got down to a serious goodbye. It was in the midst
of telling a story that I realized that my tongue was no longer under
my control, and it was then that my friend Thompson and I decided to
stumble back to out tents.
Have you ever slept on a spinning cot before? It is most unpleasant.
The normal discomforts of camping are nothing until they are combined
by a really good, beer, scotch, rum-drunk. I may have thrown up some
rice, organ meats, random unidentified vegetables, the four massive
Angkor beers I'd had before the scotch and then all the liquor I've
ever seen. I may have thrown them up into a water bottle. It may have
been an unfortunate water bottle to discover when I woke up in the
morning. And when I say it may have been these things, I guess I mean
it was so. Not that I am trying to duck responsibility for my actions
or anything, I genuinely made the incredibly foolish choices that led
to this miserable end, but there were extenuating circumstances… I
really hadn't liked being sober the day before.
That morning started at about 0230. After having voided my entire body
cavity at about 1030 I fell into a fitful and feverish doze. At 0230
one of the other fellows in my tent lost his iPod earbuds and blasted
the rest of the tent with the supremely restful sounds of Minor
Threat, or perhaps it was Social Distortion. At any rate, the group
that played had a name that brings to mind the overthrow of
governments by violent means. They are a loud, obnoxious,
spirit-rending musical group and they were played at decibel levels
that explain this fellow's general inability to hear orders when
shouted at him. Finally we resolved the earbud issue and fell back
into the snooze that had been formerly denied.
Within 40 minutes the local roosters started crowing, their internal
alarm apparently set several time zones to the left of their actual
location. When they ceased crowing the rise of the sun in Alabama
there was a scant 20 minutes of rest before some spirited Cambodian
mistook our tents for the home away from home of American Idol. He
burst into frenzied song for 40 or more minutes, during which time I
lay in a stupor of illness and fever. While I prayed that the singing
would cease so that I could once more pretend that sleep was possible
I envisioned a massacre. I saw myself wielding a bloodied machete,
with the blood of a thousand roosters and all amateur vocalists, the
world over, staining its blade. If I had had a machete, and had not
been so given over to ensuring my continued breathing by intense
concentration, what a legend I could have been.
When the local Cambodian William Hung finally ceased his endless
rendition of "She Bangs Cambodia" I allowed my breathing to take over
and slept the 10 minutes that the local populace allowed before their
early morning horn and Caribbean steel drum chorus took over the
musical duties. Might as well try to sleep at CBGBs. I wrestled myself
from my mosquito netting and stumbled around in the remains of my
dinner while using baby-wipes to clean the more egregious filth from
the floor and my body. After a miserable shave and morning toilet I
ate some MRE bread and jam for breakfast, drank some luke-warm bottled
water and started taking morning vital signs.
The Cambodian people are not regular bathers. I have had experience
with people who rarely bathe. The detainees in Guantanamo Bay are not,
as a rule, the most hygienic of men. This did not particularly bother.
They have a spicy smell, those detainees, they are a human curry. A
rich mélange of spices and bodily oils. Afghanistani people are the
spice of life, however evil and insane they may be. Cambodians, on the
other hand, are like an armpit. Perhaps like an armpit that has not
learned to adequately wipe its bottom, if your mind can conceive of
such tortured anatomy. There is something in their odor that makes one
wish for almost any other scent. Pure toilet filth has it over
Cambodian peasant in the pure toilet filth is a distinct smell, not a
mixture of foulnesses. Perhaps I overstate this, but there is truth in
it.
Take this unpleasantness on top of already being filthily sick and
repulsed by one's own smells and the day becomes an unpleasant
admixture of nausea. It's also impressive how, in a country absolutely
rife with skin diseases, parasites, amputated limbs, gross deformities
and dengue fever there is daily someone who combines all of these
features into so startling a visage that comment is forced from you.
In so much as there are general unfortunates and general combinations,
and the wearying morass of humanity parades before you without pulling
one up short for comment, the ones that really stand out stand out in
such a grotesque way. Your hand, reaching for their wrist to check the
pulse, draws back in horror and then, nerve overcoming distaste,
returning to the sore-encrusted member and squeezing for the
heart-thumping pulse. All the while your mind screams for release and
your hand shivers at the oozing pustules that are in its grasp. The
milky, desiccated eyes that stare, unlevel, out of the too cheerful
face, the toothless, rotten gum-landscape of their mouth.
Unforgettable, and yet always topped within the day by some horror
more grotesque. Dr Treves would have been beside himself here, so many
discoveries for the Academy. The poor elephant man would have been
only one in a crowd.
Miserable hang-over days are the longest ones, and it proved so on
Friday. Though I was sitting next to my dear friend Thompson I still
failed to appreciate the day as I have hitherto. Misery, heat, sweat,
despair, the four horsemen of a Cambodian hang-over.
In the early afternoon a wind kicked up. When I say a wind kicked up I
want you to imagine a scene from Pecos Bill, the tornado that Bill
roped and rode was not less forceful than the wind that kicked the
patient waiting-area tent off the ground and dropped it back onto the
poor Cambodians awaiting treatment. In the second of time I had to
react I started towards the people who were being endangered, which I
will always feel was a heroic impulse, but our LT called us all to
leave the tent area. In the moment of hesitation I was lost and by the
time I had turned back to help, all help had already been rendered. I
was only able to assist in the tent remediation, and even that I was
not much use. My friend Thompson managed to give a local woman heart
failure when he scooped her up from her peaceful seat and carried her
bodily out of the imagined harm's way. She was never in any danger
other than death by Thompson, but he wasn't to know.
After the eventual re-setting up of the tent there were many quiet
hours of vital signs, punctuated by kids with large upper arms,
friendly babies, pretty girls, and the occasional semi-human golem. We
saw 987 patients on Friday and it was a long, long day. When the
patients were finally gone we all had a medication sorting party until
around 8, at which point I took my fence-line shower, read some Paul
Johnson and collapsed into bed. The day over, I could finally reflect.
Never again, I decided, never again. I don't care how many British
doctors are leaving my life forever, I'm not mixing 151 and Glen
Fiddich for anyone. And let that be a lesson to all of you. Much love
as always and more to come.
For more of the Afghan Updates, please visit:
http://dustintheeverything.blogspot.com/?zx=ee6fac97810abcfc
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