Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. My regrets.... Here's what has been going on here.
The Rodeo
The first annual Balad Rodeo went down a couple of weeks ago. My buddy Andy was the mastermind behind this event, which ballooned from a little hospital get-together to a big freakin' deal! Donated prizes poured in from back home, to the consternation of those concerned about the appearance of solicitation of gifts from civilian enterprises. The planning got pretty intense as the Rodeo neared, and Andy bent but didn't break under the stress of the monster he had created! The day of the rodeo was beautiful, and hundreds of people came out for burgers and 'dogs, (plastic) calf-roping, bull-riding, 
Guitar-Hero-ing, and two-stepping. There was a float parade, a hot-dog eating contest, lots of country music, visits by the general and some medal of honor winners, and a rodeo clown contest. The Mustache March competition concluded; unfortunately, the closest I got to a trophy was as runner-up for "Most Robust." The 'stache got shaved on the last day of March, never to return (at least until next March...). I got to stop by the Rodeo a few times, although as the surgeon of the day on call, I was in and out of the hospital, seeing a few injured troops or Iraqis, then making the surreal journey outside to clowns and barrel-racing. Only in Balad...
VBIEDs
The last few days have brought us a dozen or so pretty severely injured national patients, many of them from this incident. You just shake your head every now and then at what suffering some will inflict on their fellow human beings, without remorse. This VBIED (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device), or car-bomb, was detonated in front of a crowded Baqouba restaurant, killing scores of men, women, and children. The pattern of injuries is gruesome, too, with a combination of fragment peppering and full-thickness burns. Given the number tallies on CNN, I think one of my Iraqi colleagues in Baqouba is pretty busy himself with more of the injured victims.
The Grinder
The number and severity of injured victims has given birth to the name we affectionately call the Balad Theater Hospital, "The Grinder." It just seems to keep rolling along, inexorable, feeding in the worst of the blown up/shot/burned, churning out discharges at the other end, patched and sutured up, quite a bit the worse for wear, like a humming, eerily efficient machine. It's a privilege we have to be able to serve in this way, especially with the amazing team we have here, but it does wear you down sometimes.
The end is near!
In just a couple of weeks, the first of our rotation will be departing. Others of us have to wait a little longer, but my, how the time has flown! It would be hard to imagine a better surgical experience for a newly minted general surgeon than to come here. I thanked one of my mentors while he visited a couple of weeks ago for the opportunity to come here, to join the ranks of the Balad Association of Doctors Anaconda Surgical Society. The acronym should be self-evident.
