HEAT and CLS…oh my!

I love how the military loves acronyms…we have an acronym for just about everything, it’s fantastic. And even more than the amount of acronyms we have, I love when we don’t know what the acronyms stand for…just makes me smile…but I’m a little strange so that might have something to do with it 🙂

Let me introduce you to some of my most recent training:

This isn't the one I was in but it looks just like this...

HEAT…Humvee Egress Assistance Training. Once again I was pretty nervous about this one. The basis of it is that your driving along in a HUMVEE and you somehow flip the vehicle or it gets flipped…how are you and all the other passengers going to safely evacuate the vehicle and establish a secuity perimeter. Now in this training they assume that a.) the vehicle flips b.) it rolls multiple times and c.) it lands on the roof. See how that complicates a little and would increase the nervousness of yours truly. But once again after some help from my amazing teammates I walked away actually enjoying myself and with the confidence to perform in the situation should it ever arise. Let me  clarify that in the training the vehicle rolls VERY SLOWLY! So while not 100% accurate how an actual incident would go down it gives you a good enough idea to prepare you…better than having no training at least. We couldn’t take photos in the trainer and to tell you the truth I was not worried about busting out my camera at that point but I found this picture online and the one I was in looked just like it.

Next…CLS…Combat Life Saver

Learning how to load a casualty onto a spine board for transport...luckily we had a girl that was tiny on our team we could practice with 🙂

CLS is like First Aid on steriods…not really big steriods like my dad takes (just kidding muscle man) but enough that over the 4 day class I learned how to give an IV and successfully started one on someone on my second attempt! CLS prepares you to control bleeding, airway, breathing and circulation…the vital things that would need to be taken care of until one of our medics or docs arrived onscene or we could call for a MEDEVAC. Over the 4 days I learned how to place a nasalpharayngeal ( i have no idea how to spell that and am too lazy to look it up right now) airway, put on a tourniquet (and I got to experience one of these my self on my leg…not fun!), start a needle decompression in the chest should someone get a sucking chest wound and of course the IV. It was a long 4 days but of course valuable training that hopefully I will never have to use. Maybe I’ll use the IV if we get bored on the FOB and want to hydrate quickly or something but hopefully that’s the only time I’ll need to use it 🙂

Leading the casualty into the MRAP...the vehicle we'll be riding around in, in Afghanistan

TSgt Monroe getting evaluated on his ability to assess Capt Joseph...we practiced this a lot

Me getting my IV from my wing buddy for the class...SrA Henderson

Me and SrA Henderson still heart each other even though we both missed the vein on our first IV attempt :o)

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last couple days. I head home to Ft Worth on Saturday for 10 days for Christmas and I can’t wait! As much as I enjoy my team and am learning TONS of cool stuff I can’t wait to see my family and friends, get out of my uniform and snuggle with my puppies by the Christmas tree even though neither of them really like to do that. Oh and eat tons of yummy cookies that my mom and little brother will be baking! YES! 🙂

I’m hanging in there…I have my good days and bad days as can be expected but I’m trying to remain positive and upbeat…but its hard sometimes. Those of you who know me know I get into my “funks” sometimes and it takes me a couple days or week to get out of them. I contemplated wether or not to include this because I don’t want ya’ll to worry about me but figured I should be honest so you know how to pray for me. I know it’ll pass in a couple days but until then it stinks :o( I get overwhelmed when I start thinking too much and you know when I start thinking too much I can’t stop :o) I’m a little bit of a control freak like that…but like I said I know it will pass and I appreciate your encouraging words. I love you all so much 🙂