My sincerest apologies for being slacker-ish.

After leaving Rustamiyah (finally, it's back in Iraqi hands!), I had some great pictures and thoughts of blogging...then came company drama, adjusting to the new place and schedule (not being able to just sit around watching movies with my medics all morning took it's toll on me), dealing with the horror of my little mini-computer not functioning anymore meaning that all my pictures are gone :) But now that I'm all settled, I'll do my best to be more conistent. Thank you all for you patience :)



The other day, I was checking out MSN.com and found a feature on a lovely dog named Sophie (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30088069/from/ET/ ). Sophie lives in Australia with her owners who like to sail. One day on a boat trip with her owners, they came across choppy waters and Sophie was lost to the water. After an hour of looking for her, her owners thought they had lost her and re-treated into shore.



Four months later, the Australian couple sees on the news a report of a "wild dog" trapped and being brought back to the mainland from a small island off the Aussie coast. The Austalian couple had to see the dog for themselves and once they saw the dog coming off the ship, they new it was their Sophie!



The most interesting part of this story was the dog's behavior. Initially, she was groomed as a nice house dog. When she arrived on the island, the park rangers noticed a skinny dog...but over time noticed her regaining her weight and found random goat carcases around the island. The dog was vicious! She would not let anything near her and was not able to kill a goat for food instead of waiting at a bowl for kibbles. The park rangers had to trap her since they could not get near her. She had turned from a sweet loving dog, to a wild beast.


Once her owners saw her in the cage and called her name, Sophie went from growling to wimpering and crying. She recognized them right away and transitioned right back to her old self without any trace of the wild beast.

I was really excited about this story and was telling it to the physician from another unit one day at the aid station. At the end, he simply said "he's much like us on deployment". Granted I haven't turned into the wild beast Sophie was, but slowly and progressively I've been seeing a change in me. I am really growing tired of seeing whiny soldiers trying to get out of duty all the time. Granted, they often are overworked, there are those who really try to abuse the system somtimes and I'm getting sick of it. Do they not know they are whining to a group of physicians who have been through the grind of a residency? That I once saw clinic with a fever and so much unbearable sinus pain? That my friend once took a 24 hour call with an eye infection, so she couldn't even touch the patients? I want to go back to seeing my older patient's who have legitimate "Internal Medicine" problems. The other physician, a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation doctor, has already crossed the line as he's been out here a few months more than I. At that moment, however, I felt like Sophie. Adapting to the new environment and almost changing identities. Only, this time, I want to hold on to a mild form of these new traits I'm developing.