Day 2: Friday--First day of ATLS

Today started with reveille at 0500 and all of us in my hutmet reluctantly crawling out of our sleeping bags. Fortunately, it had cooled off significantly overnight, so it was a really nice morning—as nice as 0500 can be, of course. After a quick breakfast at the DFAC, it was back into formation to march over to the theater, singing cadences on our way to our lecture.

We had a couple hours of lectures about general military medical things—traumatic brain injury, followed by a preventive medicine lecture I could have given in my sleep—and then the nurses headed off to Trauma Nursing Care Course (I think that's what it stands for), the dentists to Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support, and the doctors to Advanced Trauma Life Support, over at Ft. Sam Houston, which involved a bus ride by old school buses that have been painted white (and are therefore no longer school buses, I guess).

Waiting for formation

It was kinda nice being in air conditioning for the entire day, but six hours of straight lecture (they let us eat our MRE lunches at 1400), followed by three hours of practicing procedures (inserting central lines, intubating dummies, etc). And then it was back onto the buses to make our way back to Camp Bullis and the hutmets (eating the M&M's from my MRE on the way, of course).

After another squad leader meeting (we have them every night, to get the schedule for the next day), I decided the weather was mild enough for a run. We have to run in buddies (which I would want to anyway, as it was already dark by then), while carrying flashlight cones—the roads out here at camp don't have streetlights. I asked a few people, who were somewhat intimidated by my nine minute mile pace for a four mile run, and finally found a Navy family medicine intern willing to run with me (and in boots!). He's stationed at Bremerton, so we chatted about Washington and various intern complaints while we ran. And in the dark, with him wearing boots and me carrying a flashlight and both of us talking, we still managed to run faster than a nine minute mile pace.


Well, it's definitely time to go to bed (almost 2200), considering the 0445 reveille tomorrow, so we can get back to Ft. Sam to sit around and learn some more ATLS.