Crossroads

Dust from the Iraqi dessert, it’s like a khaki fog.

Aside from security, I’m also tasked with being the team’s medic. I spend most of my time treating a variety of aliments, commonly GI distress, eye infections, respiratory issues, and the occasional urinary tract infection. As part of these duties I maintain the medical locker, the trauma kits, and I also teach and train our Iraqi counterparts in trauma management.

I’ve always enjoyed medicine; found it fascinating and realized that I had a very strong aptitude for it. I think that if I ever had one regret in life it would be not going to medical school when I was younger. I considered it when I was a 23 year-old lieutenant in the Army, but chose to go into Special Forces instead. That choice was probably one of the great crossroads in my life, and the direction that I headed off in led me on a wonderful, thrilling adventure, but I will always be haunted by, “what if?”