Kuwait City

Yes... that is a picture of me in regular clothes... I escaped from Camp Patriot!!!


 I forgot what real clothes were like!

Actually, I was lucky enough to go on a visit to Kuwait City with some other Army people.  We do get to leave sometimes on MWR trips.  We headed out to the city to visit some of the sights for the day.  Plus... it was an awesome excuse to wear real clothes again.  We aren't allowed to wear "civilian clothes" now, which means I get to rotate between sweet PT shorts/t-shirt, ACUs, and my somewhat illegal PJ pants.  Going out in Kuwait City requires that women cover their knees and elbows and men cannot wear any t-shirts with writing.  No head scarves are required for women though.  Men can wear long shorts, but they need to have a collared shirt.  We are usually more conservatively dressed than most of the Kuwaiti people (if you are confused... see the above picture for appropriate attire).

Enough complaining... time to see the sights!!

Kuwait City

One of the most dangerous things you can do here in Kuwait is to get on the road and drive. The drivers here are legitimately crazy without much interest in following traffic laws. Even if you end up getting pulled over by the police and get a ticket, the government pays for it. Whenever we drive around, you see all sorts of interesting things that make the average American driver seem amazing. People have cell phones glued to their hands and heads, texting like crazy, kids not in car seats bouncing all over the car, people reading books and flying down the road, and trucks pretty much doing whatever they want. Speed limits are minimal speed suggested and lanes are just pretty markings on the ground.

Kuwait Towers

After we survived our ride downtown, we first stopped at Kuwait Towers.  They were first built in 1977 (thank you Wikipedia) and the large tower contains a large sphere with a water tank in the bottow half with a restaurant and cafe in the top half.  The smaller sphere is another cafe that supposedly rotates around.  The smaller tower is a water tower.  They have been closed for renovation since March 2012, but were still interesting to look at.






Looks nice... I still can't read it.

We then went to the Tareq Rajab Calligraphy museum.  It opened in 1980 and contains tens of thousands of beautiful calligraphy items, manuscripts, miniatures, ceramics, metalwork, glass, jade, wood, and stone-carvings.  And yes, that it directly stolen from their website.  I can't read arabic, but everything was very nice to look at and makes you appreciate all of the artistic skills that went into making it.



I tried to take this home with me, but it was too big to steal from the museum



Bird made completely out of calligraphy verses from the Qur'an

Pegasus

Lunch was at an amazing Lebanese restaurant Mais Alghanim which overlooked the Arabian Sea.  I don't think I've ever eaten so much or felt so full in my life.  Kebabs, hummus, fresh made Naan bread, and mango juice so thick the straw stood up straight.  Delicious!!!



We then spent the afternoon exploring the Maritime museum which had tons of old ships, pictures, and other sea life adventure things.  It was quite interesting to see the ships which had to bring fresh water to the Kuwaiti people as there was no other drinking water available.

A replica of some old boat

 

The guy on the right is His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
Not too sure who his friend is, but they are all over Kuwait.

One of the last places we visited was the Al-Hashemi-II, which is the largest wooden ship in the world.  It is a dhow that cost over $30 million to build over 4 years.  Interestingly, it is part of the Radisson Blu hotel and will never sail in the water.  It is a museum, restaurant, and banquet hall that could probably hold over a thousand people.  We were there on a Saturday (the Kuwaiti weekend is Friday/Saturday), so no one was around at all and we were able to explore everywhere.

The last stop of the day was at Starbucks.  And for those of you wondering, Starbucks in Kuwait is way more expensive than even airport Starbucks.  But it was a sweltering 125 degrees outside and a cold drink was well worth the price.

Stay tuned for the next adventure!

 

I wish these were real camels... but supposedly real camels
carry diseases so we aren't allowed to play with them.

Create your own caption.... Sweet mustaches!

 

Clinic Visit

Welcome back!

I thought that today I would give you a quick tour of the clinic and show you where I spend majority of my day.

We actually have it pretty good here compared with some of the other camps.  Our clinic is in a real building complete with real walls, floor, and roof as opposed to a tent (which is what they have up at Camp Buehring).  The TMC (or Troop Medical Clinic) takes up about 1/3 of the Kuwaiti medical building, but is completely separate from their facilities.  We think it may have been part of a hospital ward at some point.

Check In/Waiting Area

We have all the normal things you would seen in an American clinic including a check-in and waiting area, treatment areas, pharamacy, and work areas. 






Fortunately/Unfortunately, all of our work is also done on computers and AHLTA here in Kuwait is just as frusturating (if not more) than back in the US.  In order to see patient's records from appointments in the US, we have to log onto a completely different system that may or may not work.

Desks, desks, and more desks!
(Mine is the one with the flag- America!)

Treatment Areas

We have a total of 3 treatment areas separated by curtains, similar to a lot of Emergency Rooms, any of which can be a trauma bay. There is a fully stocked crash cart, AED, and all other necessary supplies.




Sink, charts, and lab

Yay medical supplies!



Looks like a pharmacy... or is it a bathroom?

Our pharmacy is pretty well stocked, but is in an interesting location. It used to be a bathroom a long time ago and now has shelves over the old bathtub and built into the shower stall. It's pretty funny to actually think that all of our medications are kept in an old bathroom. At least there wasn't a toilet in there....
We have quite a few medications to treat almost anything, but I don't have all the same ones I have access to back in the US... so that can change how I have to treat my patients.  I'm learning a ton about reordering supplies and medications, which is something I don't really worry about back in the US.
 
There is indoor plumbing here (Yay!), but there is a creepy looking bathtub straight out of a horror movie in it....  It's the type of thing you might wake up covered in ice with your kidneys missing.  Maybe we should set up a haunted house here for Halloween.

Creepy....

Anywho, this one might be less interesting than previous entries... but this is where I spend most of my days :)

Critters and Creatures

Wow... Time flies when you're having fun (or doing the same thing every day).

I didn't quite realize how long it was since my last post.  I promise to try to get better and post more frequently...  Try is going to be the key word here.  I'm somewhat working backward and foreward simultaneously so that eventually we will end up in the present time.

You had a tour of the Camp last time I wrote, so now I think I'm going to introduce you to some of the critters and creatures of Kuwait.

When we first arrived in Kuwait it was quite hot (and it still is...) which I thought would help keep the bugs away.  I didn't realize how wrong I would be.  Let me take the time to introduce you to Mr. Cricket.  Unfortunately, he is not the Disney type Jiminy Cricket who offers good advice to wooden boys.

Mr. Cricket approximately real size...

I know the Bible specifically mentions locusts as a plague, but I think crickets should be added to the list of plagues to hit the Middle East.  They were everywhere here during the first month.  Somehow they managed to find their way into every single building, closet, floor space, and bed here in Kuwait.  At least they don't chirp like the ones back home.

And yes, I said bed...  Lucky for me I didn't end up sharing my bed with crickets regularly as it only happened once, but other people here were attacked every night.  At least they don't bite, right?!?!?!

I continued the daily cricket body count as I swept my room out daily.  Sometimes the morning count was lowish and only around 10 or so, but most afternoons it reached upwards of 25 or more.  I was also rearranging the storage lockers and bookshelf in my room during this time--> BAD IDEA!!!  I moved the bookshelf and found over 100 dead crickets and similar numbers underneath the lockers.  I have a pretty strong stomach, but it made me almost throw up.  Yuck!

Luckily the cricket season ended about a month after we got here and that seemed to be the end of the biblical plagues.


Now onto other critters here...  The desert lizard met a desert lizard who decided to come to visit.  I ended up having to chase the silly thing around my room to rescue it.  It was tiny and I really wanted to keep it as a pet, but I did let it go.  I got some strange looks from a few people outside, but watched it for a bit as it promptly ate some ants and licked its eyeball...  I know, very exciting... sometimes we are starved for things to do here...



We have a ton of cats all over the place here that are supposed to help with rodent control.  The vets are supposed to humanely catch, neuter/spay,  vaccinate, and then re-release them and they are marked as "safe" animals.  However, I've really only seen a few ones that have been vaccinated.  They are used to being fed and played with from all of the soldiers that have been here and are decently friendly.  However--> cats can carry rabies... so if a soldier gets bit, then they have to come see me for rabies treatment.  No fun for anyone involved, including the cat.

 

Not a real Kuwait stray cat (I found this picture on the internet),
but looks pretty close to the one that hangs out by our building.
Look deeply into its eyes... it will steal your soul!

I recently came across a group of soldiers that looked pretty guilty (like toddlers) as they were walking to the bathroom trailer.  I said hello and they then told me that they were off to go wash their hands as the should because they were playing with the cats...  I'm definitely more of a dog person and am not a huge fan of cats, but there were some cute kittens here.  However, I stayed far away as I don't really want to treat myself for rabies.

I went to visit Josh a few weekends ago and had the chance to play with a friendly dog.  The vet services at his camp bring a civilian dog to come play about once a month.  This one was a yellow lab mix that was obsessed with playing catch with an empty water bottle.  He was pretty cute and made me miss our puppy Emma back home.

Cute dog with its water bottle... I miss puppy playtime!

So far we haven't really seen any scorpions or camel spiders here.  I have seen plenty of camels though that graze in huge open areas on the side of the roads.  It's somewhat crazy to see them wandering around underneath huge power lines.  The baby ones are particularly cute and I thought it might be fun to bring one home as a souvenir once we leave, but Josh said no.  Oh well...  Maybe I can talk him into it over this deployment or the next one.  Anyone think the city of El Paso allows camels?

Home Sweet Home

Oh Hello!

Life has been a little busy over the past few days which has resulted in delaying this new post.  More about all of that later.  However, I did get to spend a good bit of time with Josh yesterday and today.  It's one of the few perks of being here.

I think today I will give you a tour of my home here at lovely Camp Patriot.  Home sweet home is a small camp that probably takes about 3 minutes to walk across.  We area small part of the much bigger Kuwait Naval Base which is located on the Arabian Sea and have a combined force of Army, Navy, and Marines here.

Chapel by the Arabian Sea
Everything is pretty much housed in the same types of buildings

There are some great perks to living on such a small camp, but there are also some downsides.  We live in big buildings similar to warehouses with concrete floors and bunk beds.  I am fortunate enough to have my own room within one of these big buildings, as I am one of the highest ranking females here (as strange as it seems).

My room- Tons of pictures of family and friends too

The room has 4 beautiful white walls like a prison cell, a couple of sets of bunk beds, and a bunch of wall lockers.  Look closely at the picture.  The walls don't quite extend all the way to the ceiling too.  If we had more people, I would likely have to have a roommate.

Other side of the room complete with metal lockers

I don't have to worry about waking anyone else up, leaving the lights on, dealing with petty roommate things... but it does mean that I don't have anyone else there to talk to if I spend a good bit of time in my room.  That all being said, I usually don't hang out in there much as it could be pretty depressing.

I usually head over to the MWR building where there are couches and more stuff to look at besides the walls.  There are some TVs, ping pong, pool tables, and air hockey.  It's pretty nice to have somewhere to go, although it is noting really compared to the facilities at Camp Arifjan.  Oh well, the grass is always greener over the fence.  We do have a shuttle that runs between the camps, so I can use all the fun stuff over there when I visit Josh.

The camp has concrete barriers and places to hide in case of incoming rounds/fires/missiles/alien attacks...  The units paint one while they are here, but we haven't gotten that far yet.  I've kind of made it a pet project to make sure that it actually gets done as the morale here isn't the greatest and we do need some fun things to look forward to.

Painted barriers

For alien attack protection

Kuwait Medical Clinic

The clinic is only a short walk away in the Kuwaiti Medical Center.  We have about a third of their building for our clinic and only treat our own soldiers there.  We do have a partnership with the Kuwaiti doctors next door, so they will run some labs for us and do x-rays as well.

Camp Patriot Troop Medical Clinic

No clinic tour today, but that will come in the next few days.  I have to leave something for you all to come back to besides just my wonderful writing.







Break time... Gotta go change my laundry over....

And with that I'm done with laundry.  We have people that cook and clean for us and there is a laundry service available, but doing my own laundry makes me feel like I get to do something for myself (and then I know that laundry detergent was actually used too).

The DFAC (dining facility) offers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight meals as we have a ton of soldiers working shifts.  The cooks are all pretty good and most are actually from India, so our Indian themed food nights are amazing.  We all sit family style with about 12 people to the table, but most aren't full at all.  They have a bunch of TVs, so if you don't have anyone to eat with you can always watch the news.

Bathrooms are in 1 trailer and showers in another.  All of the water is trucked in to the camp as we live in the desert.  It doesn't matter which handle you turn on in the shower as the cold water is always hot hot hot and heaven forbid if you take a shower in the middle of the day.... Now I know what a boiled lobster feels like.

Water Truck

Anywho, enough writing for today.  Thank you all for reading and keeping up with my desert adventures.  I miss you all tons!!

Liz

Gravel everywhere... At least it's not sand!

Can You Tell Me How to Get to Kuwait?

Welcome back!

I worked on the program a bit more and feel like I'm getting the hang of it.  Anywho, kinda boring stuff... but it's something new to do and figure out.  I'm by no means a crazy computer person, so I feel slightly excited to have figured this out on my own without asking for help :)

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.... Kuwait Adventures!  I figured that I could start back at the beginning and catch up to where I am now.  It probably won't take all that long since most days here are like Groundhog Day (same stuff over and over and over and over again with a bit of different things sprinkled here and there).



M9 Range Fun!

The week prior to deployment I had to report to the Conus Replacement Center (CRC) at Ft. Bliss.   I was supposed to sign in on July 4th- America!, but was able to start Saturday morning as I live in El Paso.  Lucky for me, I stationed at Ft. Bliss so I showed up with a well researched and complete memo to allow me to live at home during that week.  It was great to be able to sleep in my own bed that entire week while spending the day at different classes, meetings, and training to prepare us for deployment. 


Highlights of the week included a full day of first aid classes where I (along with the other doctors and nurses) was told not to answer any questions or really even talk.  It was true Army training at its finest.  We did get a chance to do some fun things like go to the range as well as sit and fill out lots of paperwork.  I spend a lot of my time driving back and forth from post as we live a good 30min away, but spending some more time at home was well worth it.

Josh and I both left Ft. Bliss on July 11 to start our new desert adventures.  He left later in the afternoon to meet his unit at Ft. Hood, Texas as he is assigned to the 21st Combat Support Hospital (21st CSH).  He was at Ft. Hood for about 2 weeks training with his unit and then left the US on July 26th.  He finally made it to Kuwait a few days later with an unexpected overnight stop in Baltimore due to plane issues.

Our plane left Ft. Bliss later in the morning on July 11 with a few stops along the way.  You're also not really supposed to take any pictures while we travel, but a few of us snuck some in.  Our CRC group was about 100 soldiers and we flew a chartered Atlas Air 747 (I had never even heard of Atlas Air until that day) with a civilian pilots and flight attendants.  There really isn't a rhyme or reason to boarding and you just all get on the plane when they tell you without any real assigned seats.  We flew to Indianapolis to pick up a bunch of contractors and then on to Germany. 



The Hahn Hen

We landed in Frankfurt at the Hahn airport on a dreary rainy day very similar to all of our time spent at Ft. Lewis in Washington state.  Apparently Hahn means hen.... so there were cartoon hens all over everything at the airport. 


The military travelers are kept separate from the rest of the travelers, so we got off the plane and went to a small terminal where we waited for a few hours.  There were a few little shops and a cafe, but the craziest thing is that you can smoke indoors there.  Luckily, there was a nonsmoking area to escape to as the ventilation was pretty poor.

We got back on the plane after about 3 hours and everyone promptly fell asleep as it felt like it was the middle of the night to our poor bodies.  I woke up a little bit later and thought that the plane was quiet... a little too quiet.  We had never left the ground due to a hydraulic fluid leak.  Oh well, everyone had to get back off the plane for another few hours while they were finally able to fix it.  We took off again (only 9hrs late) with the next destination of Kuwait City where we landed about midnight local time after over 48hrs of traveling time.

Atlas Air in Germany

We loaded up some more buses and drove to Camp Arifjan to start our inprocessing, and no the military does not care that it is zero dark thirty in the morning and we haven't really slept in 2 days.  Inprocessing took a few more hours and then it was time to find our units to head to our real destinations.  I met up with a few of the other doctors here and we waited and waited for our minders to come find us.......  And waited.....  And no one came.  Eventually, we started wandering through some of the buildings and found someone to help us.

It was about this time that I found out was I going to Camp Patriot instead of Camp Buehring.  I had never heard of Camp Patriot and honestly wasn't too thrilled as everyone I knew from my training with the unit back in April at NTC was going to be stationed about 2hrs away from me.  Little did I know then, it was actually going to be much better for me and much closer to where Josh would be as well.  After hanging out watching "Storage Wars" for 3hrs with the NCO helping us out, I was finally able to get picked up and head out to Camp Patriot.
 


Camels!


We drove down the highway where camels were grazing between electric towers, crashed and broken down cars littered the sides of the road, and crazy Kuwaiti drivers tried to kill you. 



The Arabian Sea was a welcome sight as we drove onto the Kuwait Naval Base, but the heat and humidity was like a slap in the face when Iopened the door after we arrived at Camp Patriot.  I got out of the vehicle in front of my new barracks building and was eager to start my new job here.... but it was time for a nap in a real bed first.

Stay tuned for more fun Adventures of a Desert Lizard!!

Sunshine, Sand, and water?!?!?!

Hello!

I've finally gotten around to creating the blog so that anyone that's interested can keep up with my Kuwait adventures.  I'm still working on figuring out this entire program, so bear with me and I'm sure my posts will be more fancy as time goes on.

I'm sure if you're actually reading this, then you do know a bit about me.... but just in case you accidentally stumbled on my humble little blog or have forgotten who I am in the long 6 weeks I've been gone, I will tell you a little bit about myself.

I am an active duty Army Pediatrician currently deployed to Kuwait.  I traveled to this desert from another desert in El Paso, Texas where I usually spend my days taking care of newborns and occasionally some older kids as well.  I am lucky enough that my husband, Josh- who is an Army Emergency Medicine doctor, is also in Kuwait.  However, we are stationed at different camps but are close enough to get to see one another weekly.  We are both adjusting to a new mission, change in our daily activities, and change in patient population.  Interestingly, a lot of the soldiers I am taking care of are young enough that they could still see me in a pediatric clinic if they weren't in the Army.  Just some food for thought....

I am currently stationed at Camp Patriot in Kuwait which is located on the Kuwait Naval Base.  Yes, you did read that correctly.... Kuwait Naval Base.  We are right on the Arabian Sea and yes, there is water in the desert.  I can't see the Sea (hahaha) from where we live and work, but it is a short 5 minute walk if you're willing to brave the heat and humidity.  It is quite interesting to work on the same base as the Kuwaiti military, but more to come on that in future days.

Alright, time to figure out how to make this blog look nice and easy to read....

Thanks for reading!
Liz