For those who have known me now, I have been a member here at JBO on and off for around 6 years or so (give or take). I have been deployed in the 10th Combat Support Hospital supporting US operations in Iraq. We are the main supporting hospital in the Iraqi AO (area of operation). Recently one of our cases was reported on and published. After clearing it with my command, I was cleared to share this story with you all as well. My point in sharing this is to just send out a reminder that there are still heros fighting and dying everyday. The author put this into words better then I could, so I am going to type up what Gina Cavalliaro wrote word for word (with specific locations removed). I would hope you will read this and get something from it. It just may be a way for me to vent my stress too, I don't know.

xxxxx - Iraq -- The patient, a 20 something female US solier, died four days after arriving at the 10th Combat Support Hospital with a fresh gunshot wound.

A bullet had peirced her chest a few inches below her right collarbone and exited through her back on teh upper part of her right flank, gouging a hole the diameter of a soda can.

During the last days of her life at the hospital, her health dipped and spiked, but she never improved beyond critical condition despite the aggressive efforts and passionate ministering of the surgeons, nurses and medical technicians who treated her. The blast severly damaged her right lung and her body stuggled to deal with the trauma.

Her left lung, the smaller of the two, worked harder to take in oxygen to compensate, but she couldn't get enough carbon dioxide out; a ventilator kept her alive.

She woke up at least once while in the ICU and, in a groggy state, nodded "yes" to a nurse who asked her if she had pain.

"Occasionally, when we'd turn her or mess with her dressings, she'd rouse to the pain. She would wake up and look around, she'd lock eyes with you," said CPT xxx, and intensive care nurse on the day shift.

The first day the patient was there, a nurse from the night shift came to visit on her day off. Standing next to the gurney in her physical training uniform, 1LT xxx tenderly stroked the patient's hair and looked at her, checked her vital signs and watched her for a few minutes, whispering a private word in her ear.

The staff knew little about he patient, but they acknowledged that, as far as they knew, the wound was selfinflicted and the incident was under investigation.

But the cause of her injury was secondary; there was a great deal of sympathy and concern that her life be saved and that she be able to return to her family.

In the ICU room where the female soldier was cared for, others came and went.

There was a male soldier, a medic who had been banged around in the bad of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle when a roadside bomb exploded. He was evacuated the next day.

here was a Marine from an explosive ordinance disposal unit with burns and lacerations fom at least one explosion that he could remember. He said that he suspected the bomb had been laced with petrolium. He was burned trying to save another Marine whose body had caught fire. He, too, was evacuated the next day.

In surgery 12 hours after the woman's first life saving operation, the hospital's chief cardiothorasic surgeon, LTC xxx, painstakinly and reluctantly removed her right lung. At first he thought he would be able to remove only part of it, but when he got a look at it and saw the damage, he took it all.

At 1540, with a Beastie Boys song blaring from an iPod docking station, xxx began what would become a 3 1/2 hour operation with a team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, a preioperative nurse and operating room technicians.

There were more people on hand than usual in the green-and-blue environment of the operating room. Nurses from the ICU were there to watch over their special patient, joined by the 10th CSH chaplain, Maj. xxx. He and the patient's father, also a chaplain, know eachother and had spoken on the phone.

Before surgery, a couple of nurses stood near the patiend and delicately stroked her arms and hands as if to soothe and reassure.

"It's the human touch. I always think taht a lot of these could be my children, so that's why the touch," said Maj. xxx, who has been a perioperative nurse for 25 years and has a son serving in the 3rd ACR (Armored Cavalry Regiment).

With arms crossed and nexks craned, the crowd watched most of the first hour of surgery, some eventually slipping out to get back to their jobs.

Things were going reasonably ell. The damaged lung was out and hope was rising when xxx's voice pierced the optimism with a cautionary tone: "Wait a minute. Something's happening here."

The music was turned off and someone was sent for more blood. A whisper suggested the patient had been lost and, in fact, her chances of surviving were dim. But xxx, with donzens of lung and heart transplants behind him, was not about to give up on his patient.

"A pulmonary artery tore. It's a tough repair. Normally a patient would die from that," said xxx afterward. "She's young. She's going to make it through."

And she did make it through the first pneumonectomy for the 10th CSH. Despite the odds, this patient looked as if she had weathered the worst.

Patients who are stabilized after surgery usually take a 20 min helicopter ride to LSA Anaconda in Balad within 24 hours. But this paient's condition was too fragile. With her right lung gone and her left debilitated, she was deterriorating one hour and rallying the next.

The left lung was slowly shifting into the cavity that once held the right and the vessels connecting her remaining lung to her main arteries were being torqued, creating blood pressure problems. After air was pumped into her chest cavity, pushing her lung back into place, her condition - and her outlook for survival - improved.

A team of respiratory specialists were flown from Laudstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to accompany the patient. It was determined her chances of surviving would increase if the transfer to LSA Anaconda was eliminated.

But the team never accompanied her. On day four, her body, which had been in overdrive on several fronts, began suffering muliple system failures. She died during another surgery that would become the last atempt to save her life.

"We beat her up pretty bad trying to save her, but we just couldn't do it," said LTC xxx, the hospital's chief anesthesiologist.

The hospital continued to throb with activity the day the patient died, but heads hung a little lower when the news of her death got around.

As he does with all patients who arrive in critical condition at the CSH, Chaplain xxx looked for dog tags or a wedding band on the young patient. She wore a ring on her left hand, but, he said, it wa a chastity ring, not a wedding band.

He discovered that the patient often exchanged e-mail with her father and that her favorite Bible verse was Joshua 1:9, so he printed out a copy of it and pasted it onto the wall above her bed. He also plaed Christian musci for her and spoke to her, repeating the verse that had inspired and sustained her.

"Be strong and of good courage," he said, "do not be afraid, nor be dimayed, for the Lord your God is with you whereever you go."


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