Thursday, June 25, 2009














Letter 17

June 18th, 2009
Balad, Iraq

Everyone:

This latest letter is going to be interesting for me to write as I have two extremes of emotions. The happy side of the letter revolves around my wife and me celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary today! Wow! Shelby and I have come a long way in 15 years. We started out living in a 700 square foot apartment in Fortville, Indiana in a cheesy apartment that did not have a dishwasher, air conditioning…heck it did not even have screens in the windows. We used to scrape together change just to go rent a movie. We learned multiple ways to spice up Ramen noodles and Spaghetti O’s. Shelby’s father at one point even gave us a bunch of venison meat as we could not afford hamburger…we made a lot of “venison helper”. We have survived my multiple trips back to school, and four kids. Speaking of that I will share a story with you regarding how we “set the time” when we would start having children. I thought that I would be cleaver and be able to hold Shelby off about when she wanted to start to have kids. So I told her that she could have a plant…if she could keep it alive for a year, then she could get an animal. Again, if the animal survived for a year then we could start having children. On our first wedding anniversary I bought Shelby a nice rubber tree plant. Then sometime in the next year we found Chan, our Siamese kitten. Anyway, I came home one day to find Chan hanging from the stem and the remains of the shredded rubber tree plant!…Shelby was so upset that I would enforce “the rule”! Anyway, the next year we had Mahayla. (This is the part of the letter where I think that I was ever actually in charge). Anyway, the error that I made was that I did not put an ending point on my conditions. I now have two dogs, two cats, I had 4 hamsters at one point, and of course 4 kids. Now, Mahayla has the plan to start breeding beagles…say a prayer for me! (Anybody want a beagle)? God has been really good to me, and I feel blessed everyday for my family.

The sad side of this letter was that since I last wrote my sponsoring doctor (PAs need to have a doctor indicated for them to be licensed), died suddenly at work. Dr. Fred Osborn was the one that helped push for me to be hired when I first graduated from PA school 9 years ago. He was a true mentor for me and I feel that I owe him so much. It was really hard on me to be here and not be able to go to his funeral. I want to say thank you to Fred for being my mentor, teacher and most importantly being my friend. I will miss you more than words can say in a letter. Below is a picture of Dr. Osborn:

The picture below is of me, Fred, and Erin another PA at Community Hospital of Anderson. Please everyone reading this say a prayer for Fred’s family.


Things are starting to change a bit here at our base. Recall that the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) that we have with Iraq’s new governments was that all US combat troops be out of all Iraq cities by the end of June. We have been pretty busy here as we have had several units leave and new units arrive with all the changes taking place.

Speaking of our clinic I have a funny story that has recently happened. Our clinic also takes care of TCNs (third country nationals). These tend to be Pakistani, Turkish, Indonesian, etc. Well, I was seeing this patient who had flank pain and pain when he urinated. Needless to say he did not speak very good English. I told my medic get urine from him so that we could check his urine. Well, our medic sent him to the bathroom with the little urine cup…well about twenty minutes later, he is still in the restroom…what the world? Finally, he emerges and hands the medic a cup of stool! The medic comes to tell me that we do not have urine, but we do have a nice stool sample…I bust out laughing, which the medic did not think it was funny as she had to look at the patient as he came out of the bathroom and handed her “the sample”. What do you think this guy is thinking…”why would the Americans want me to poop in a cup”? He either thought we were thorough or that we were idiots! Nice skill in getting it into the cup. What do you say? What can you say? I will say this most of the TCNs are very nice and thankful for any care that we give them.

Several days ago we had the worst sandstorm ever! Now take any picture of sand storms that I have sent in previous letters and multiply it easily by 10. This one was like a blizzard; you could not see more than 10 feet in front of you and you could not breathe without covering your face. There must have been some moister in the sand as it literally stuck to everything. It looked like what happens when you get hard blowing cold snow and it covers the street, cars etc. It was everywhere. It was so bad I ran into my room, in the time it took me to open my door and close it my fire alarm was going off due to the cloud of sand that entered my room. My hair was covered as was my clothes. There is no way to adequately describe it, but I hope to never experience a storm like that again. What makes it worse is that it is so consistently hot. It is always above 110 everyday. I think most days it may get up to 120…so when the wind blows it is more like a convection oven than a cool breeze.

We had to say good bye to Dr. Sammi this week. He is an Iraqi-American doctor that we have been working with. He specifically has been working with local doctors and the US State Department trying to improve their healthcare system. He has been in charge of a bunch of Iraqi doctors that have been through our clinic to observe American outpatient medicine and mass casualty operations. Below is a picture of Dr. Sammi:


This picture was taken during our shift in the clinic. We generally have four providers on during the day. Dr. Andrew Porter in on the left, he is a sports medicine doctor out of Iowa. Major Jeff Romig is next to CPT Porter, and is a PA out of Illinois. Dr. Sammi is in the middle. I am next to Dr. Sammi, and CPT Travis Welch is on the right end. We are standing in front of our mural T-wall in front of the clinic that blocks the entrance and protects it from any indirect fire attacks (mortar/rockets). You can see who was actually working during the shift as CPT Porter and I have stethoscopes on! We were all squinting in the picture as the sun was in our eyes and the sand was blowing.

I have a few more pictures of our base that I will share with you. The first is from the roof of our clinic. We have been known to have a few cigars up here at night when it cools down. It does provide some nice scenery of our surrounding area. 180 degrees from this picture is the airstrip. It is pretty cool watching the fighters taking off at night with their afterburners. It is also pretty peaceful and quit so it is a good place to “get away”.


The trees in the background are located at our perimeter. We do have some trees but for the most part Army = plant death. If you take the road scene above in the picture heading “deeper into the picture” toward the perimeter you will see the palm tree grove below. This edge of the base is relatively close to the Tigris River.


The fence is our perimeter. See there really is vegetation outside our base! Makes you feel safe that there is just a chain link fence between our base and the Iraqi countryside. We do have the area under surveillance and there are guard towers similar to the one seen below:


Besides guard towers we do have plenty of aircraft observing the area. The inner base is also protected by T-walls and other barriers. Finally, the aircraft for this letter is the very large C-17 transport plane. This plane is also known as a Globemaster.


This picture does not do justice to how large this plane really is. I actually flew on one of these during my first deployment. I flew all the way from Germany into Kabul. They are not built for comfort, but they sure can transport a lot of items.

I will try to do better about writing more frequently. I have been working very hard to try to finish my PhD…which I did send in another draft yesterday, so it is moving! Also, the clinic is busy as usual. We have been averaging about 2,500 – 3,000 patient visits per month! In addition to our clinic duties all soldiers that leave Iraq must do what is called a PDHA (Post-Deployment Health Assessment), which means they have to meet with a medical provider. We do a screening on everything from suicidal/homicidal issues to environmental exposures. It is tedious, but is a good screening tool. This is done within thirty days of the soldiers leaving theater. This last week was really hard as the unit that we were clearing had a soldier killed the day before by a grenade that was thrown into the vehicle. Several other US soldiers were injured. This was one of his last missions before getting to go home. I think it bothered all of us, as it was a reminder of just where we are at. Please say a prayer for his family and all the soldiers that were affected by his death. However, attacks do seem to be declining, which I hope is a trend that will continue. Just keep your thoughts and prayers coming for all the service members and their families. NEVER FORGET that all the service members are fighting for our freedoms and our way of life. NEVER FORGET that we live in the greatest country on Earth with more opportunity than any other. Not much longer and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible when I get home.

God Bless

Major Roscoe

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