some time at home, some time at base

Hey everyone,

Hope you are all staying cool and having fun during the hot summer days. I have been doing well and have been having some fun in-between all of the work.

I have spent some time at home last week and just relaxed, and took days trips to tel aviv and jerusalem. It was nice to stay at home for two days, but at the same time i really wanted to be at base with all of my friends and hang out with everyone. I went and picked up my kindle that I had my friend bring back from the US. So i spent some time loading books and reading. Having a kindle here in Israel is truly amazing, I have access to so many more books and books are so much more cheaper than in the books stores here. I have been buying books here for anywhere from 20-30 dollars a book which is ridiculous for a paperback so most of the time i trade book with my friends and try to read really slow, which is hard for me. Now i can buy all of my books from Amazon for less than $15 and have it on my kindle in less than a minute. It is great! much better option than a bookstore.

Anyway, returned to base in the middle of the week and this week we had a refresher course for all of the medics, paramedics, and doctor in the unit. It was a lot of fun. We had some class lessons and then we set up scenarios where we had volunteers with "injuries" that we had to treat. It was stimulation of triage in war. I learned so much about treatment in the field, how to work under pressure and that I really did understand more in hebrew than I thought. Plus since i haven't gone to a medics course in the army, this week was a good time to learn about how the army does things differently than in the US. I also got to practice my skills on actual "victims" I was able to splint fractures, start IV's, assist with putting in chest tubes, and various other medical procedures. All of these were performed on soldiers that have volunteered, and we had ways to actually perform the procedures so that we could do the procedure without hurting the soldier. It was amazing to watch and perform in something so amazing. The one procedure we actually did perform on the soldiers is that we did actually give IVs to all the soldiers. We timed each other to see how quickly each person could get an IV in someone and it also improved our skills.

Having this skills lab was important to us. If something like a war or other mass casualty event occurs we all can work together and know what to do. Yes it was hard, we were in the heat, but at the same time it was fun and important. most of all i think that we bonded as a team.

This weekend i am spending at home. It is hot and I haven't left the house because it is so hot outside. Next weekend i am on-call at base. hopefully it won't be as hot as it is this weekend so i can hang out outside for a little bit.

Hope everyone is doing well!
Love,
Roxanne