Pre-Game Kick-off

I woke up this morning and looked at my alarm clock. 6:01. I was supposed to be on the soccer field, in formation at 6 a.m. or my squad will have to do push-ups. How in the world did that happen? I set the alarm for 4 so I could hit snooze a few times, have a nice leisurely high-protein breakfast, re-check my gear and be in place at a quarter till. It's a good thing I live a block away. And that I produce very minimal body odor. Even with the base police stopping to give me a warning for speeding, I was still dressed and in formation by 6:22 (so no required push-ups), and it turned out we weren't really required to be there until 6:30, and didn't start doing any real training until 7:30. But, wow, sheer terror totally beats the heck out of caffeine for waking you up. Holy cow.

We started the day by sitting. And not quite having everything. But in short order we were issued our own rubber ducky "rifles" (not, as Lieutennant Dolomisiewicz corrected us, "guns") and were placed in the capable hands of Lieutennants Anthon Lemon and Marion Keehn, covering the basics of Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Our winter term Combat Medical Skills coursework came in handy as we set about triaging and evacuating one another from varous corners of the USUHS woods. When an insurgent group running the Land Navigation lanes stole half of our weapons, we successfully completed our mission with the remaining rifles and an assortment of appropriately-sized sticks. I have to admit, I was never one of those kids who would point sticks at people and yell "bang," so I was probably much less adept at this part of the mission than some of my counterparts. Nevertheless, I found it to be a rather satisfying experience and highly recommend it to anyone crouching behind a tree and guarding a perimeter of a critical woods-crossing mission in suburban Bethesda. We unfortunately sustained a handful of casualties, all of whom were successfuly triaged and prepared for evacuation by our expert quarter-doctors.

In the afternoon, Ensign Amy Alexander proceeded once again to blow away expectations by creating a Swiss Seat to tight that Master Seargent Wilson tore skin off his finger trying to check it. With the help of Lieutennant Ian McDougall, we practiced our technique on a fifteen-degree slope. Then one by one, we took the elevator to the third floor of Building A, the stairs to the fourth, and a ladder to the roof and proceeded to lower ourselves down the side of the wall. How exactly this makes us better doctors I haven't quite wrapped my mind around yet, but that doesn't mean I think we should stop doing it. Photos below are some of the highlights, though more are posted on our official Facebook group page http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=224911420640&ref=mf.