Let the countdown begin!

So I'm officially deployed now, although it doesn't feel like it. I'm hanging out in Virginia on a naval base until Tuesday. I was going to blog yesterday, but that was the day I left home and frankly I didn't have anything positive to say.

I'm doing a little better today. I went to church at the chapel on base with my friend Ryan (we work together at Travis and he and I will be the only two anesthesiologists in Ghazni). It was the first time I had seen anchors, propellers, and sextants worked into stained-glass windows, let alone next to scenes of the Nativity and Ascension. But it was an uplifting sermon.

I've been counting my blessings a lot, especially since I began reading Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. It's one of those books I that I've always told myself I was going to read, but never got around to it. It is about a psychiatrist who was taken into a prison camp during WWII. He writes more about ideas and perspective than the depravations of being a prisoner, but he details it enough to make me realize I have no excuse to feel sorry for myself.

One passage in particular rang true to me. He talked about how all of your profession, achivements, friends, home, etc are stripped from you and you are left to define yourself in different terms. He noticed that both with himself and others, all other realities crumbled except for the love of one's spouse- he just knew instictively that could never be taken away. I never had to starve in a Nazi work camp, but I did get to partake in the cullinary delight of the military's packaged meals and crawl around in muddy sand. I mosly just thought of Jen, and how she would always be there for me. Unless Fabio moves to Vacaville (just kidding, honey!).

By the way, I outshot the cop at the shooting range most of the time. I'm pretty much a trained killer now...not!