Welcome to the Office

Ok, since I’m back around internet (almost as good as dial up), we’ll do a little catching up on all things medical REMF. Starting with medical facilities. One of the things a lot of young troops or those deployed for the first find surprising is the level of care available here. As in, this isn’t your family doctor’s office. We can handle trauma quite well enough to get someone to a surgical facility as needed; we’ve some of the finest airlift capacity in the world.

But:

If you need labs or x-ray, you’re going to do some traveling. Either across post, or across country, depending on your location. Need an MRI? You’re going out of the country, or not getting one. Manage diabetes? Goodbye Afghanistan, hello Germany, and get ready to be a civilian again. And privacy, here, means we’ll try to not let anyone walk into the cubicle while your pants are around your ankles to the best of our ability.

So what does your typical REMF medic see on an average day? As most would anticipate, there's lots of sports, training, and work-related injuries such as sprains, strains, cuts, and bruises. And given our environment, plenty of stomach and bowel complaints. Then there's the stuff that's less pleasant: the warts (in lots of places, some of them not so enjoyable to work around), fungal infections, hemmerhoids, scabies, and just plain poor hygiene related problems.

Makes me appreciate how outstanding our normal healthcare standards are at home; I hope it makes the same impression on our younger troops who’ve never been exposed to anything else.