This started out as letters home to my friends and family while I was at Hurricane Katrina, and continued through my deployment to Afghanistan. I have recently added my friend Clara Hart as a contributor. Now it very roughly chronicles life as a civilian, and citizen of the USA. If you need some assistance with Workplace Safety Programs, please let me know, I am happy to help.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Worse Than I Thought
The aerovac arrived yesterday bringing another wounded warrior. His injuries were so much worse than I ever could have imagined. How is it possible someone could live through a blast that literally shredded most of one side of his body? I didn't sleep much last night, his beautiful face, without so much as a scratch on it, was imprinted on my brain. It's too sad and some days it's too damn hard.
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I have no idea how you do it at all but even I can understand that some days are bound to be harder than others. You live on the boundary between the land where it is possible and the terra incognita where nothing that anyone does can change the trajectory that this wounded warrior has been launched upon. But you have to try because you don't know which side of the line you're currently on.
The medical staff upstream from you have managed to keep people on "this" side who would have never made it this far in other wars. A soldier at Gettysburg who stood too near a canister round would have been shredded just as thoroughly and spent a few minutes or hours in anguish before dying. In subsequent battles for 100 years or more the outcome was never in doubt and soldiers continued to die from wounds of that magnitude.
Now you can save some. You don't know which ones so you don't give up on any of them and I'm pretty sure that, whatever the outcome, you do make a difference. The rest of us never really know if we did or didn't.
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