Didn't see that one coming

That could really be the theme for all of 2007. 2007 was supposed to be the one full year I had on shore duty and, in theory, was going to be the year that I got to spend the most time with my family. Guess I will never be stoned as a medium or fortune teller. My leave period, in perfect concert with the rest of 2007, was no exception.

Leave itself was wonderful, as you might imagine. It was wonderful seeing the family again, and if you want the details Kate has posted many of them. I know I can't top what she said and the pictures she posted, so I won't try. Sarah was a little bigger than I expected her to be, and Sabrina was smaller. I think I expected Sabrina to have grown a lot physically since every time I talk to her on the phone she sounds much more grown up, but I was glad that she was still my little big girl. There was the normal part leave travel that everyone goes through, and if you want the details on that craziness I will direct you to my friend Geoff's blog. He just got home a day or so ago, and he had many of the same experiences and frustrations I did spending 34 hours in Kuwait to go through customs. They were adamant that you could not bring explosives, live ammunition, or body parts home, which really makes you wonder. I would have thought that went without saying.

The part of my leave experience that is, to me, memorable happened before I even left Baghdad. I did finally drive outside Rusty which was interesting to see the rest of Iraq that our soldiers see every day. Lots of horse carts and people selling things on the side of the road. When I got to BIAP (Baghdad Int'l) I had two days before I was supposed to leave. That first night as I tried to sleep I started to get a belly ache, and by the time I got up in the morning it had localized to the right lower quadrant. Based on my time in the clinic I knew what that was a sign of, so I jumped on my right foot and got the shooting pain that confirmed to me that I was getting appendicitis. I hoped that is was just hypochondria, but I thought I'd go to the aid station just to be sure. They drew some blood and took me to the nearest hospital to have it analyzed.

The interesting part of the story is that the nearest hospital was the Camp Cropper Hospital. Camp Cropper is a camp that has grown quite a bit in the past two years because it became the major detainee facility in Iraq after that whole Abu Graib unpleasantness. I was the only American being treated there, and in fact the only patient who was not in restraints. In the recovery room there were four other beds (mine was actually in a little room off to the side) with three patients who were unconscious and dying, but still tied to the bedrails. One guy had been shot over 30 times (according to the medic) in the course of his pre-capture experience, one had been cured of his terrorist tendencies by getting shot in the head by a helicopter (not sure how he survived that, but some credit has to go to the doctors; the medics said he was as friendly as any other six year old, even though he was in his twenties), and one guy had a flesh eating virus in the advanced stages. I didn't check him out to closely even though it would have made a great discussion topic for any medical school interviews since I did have a fresh cut that hadn't fully scabbed over.

The doctors were great and mentioned that it was nice to operate on a patient who was not tied to his bed. One nurse was a little on the crabby side, but she did give me morphine when I asked and can you really blame her crankiness seeing who she normally has to work with? The medics were also very helpful and they, together with the guards, enjoyed recounting the terribly wounded bad guys who had been treated at Cropper. I suspect they embellished a bit since, as Tim was quick to point out, being shot 30 times means a guy would have had to reload, and as I will point out here, it also means he would have had to hit what he was shooting at for a majority of two full magazines. But soldiers will be soldiers, and they took pride in their job. In a weird way. So I now have a war wound and a story to go with it. One more thing to check off the list of things I never wanted to happen but 2007 has allowed me to experience.