I am fast approaching my last few days here at FOB Sharana. My replacement has likely just finished the first leg of his long journey here to Afghanistan. Things have slowed down quite a bit over the last two weeks or so - which is fine by me. I've had my fill of trauma, and it wouldn't bother me one bit if I never saw another war injury again.
Unfortunately, today our respite from trauma was ended. Sadly, this patient was another child. He was an eight year old boy that happened to find an unexploded piece of ordnance. He sustained a traumatic amputation of his right hand. The x-ray below demonstrates the extent of the injury to his hand. The good news is that he will survive this injury.
The following pictures are action shots from various traumas the 691st FST has received over the last month and a half.
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| Trauma Chaos: Afghan with severe closed head injury. |
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| Same patient as previous picture. The trauma team is struggling to obtain IV access. He was combative and disoriented. I ended up just giving him Ketamine IM in order to sedate him long enough to place an IV. Sadly, his prognosis was not good. |
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| This is a child with a gunshot wound to the back. The gentlemen on the left is a local Afghan physician. |
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| Waiting to accept two patients that both sustained life-threatening gunshot wounds. If you look closely, you can see the second helicopter approaching. I have no idea why I'm wearing a surgical mask in this picture. |
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| ICU team packaging a critically injured patient for transport to Bagram hospital. |
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| Prepositioning for a mass casualty. We are waiting for the helicopters. |
MAJ Randall D. Moore, CRNA
691st Forward Surgical Team
FOB Sharana, Afghanistan
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