Daddy's Home!
Weary medics' war ends
For month after month, the Utah-based hospital unit saw soaring numbers of soldiers wounded during Mideast duty
By Matthew D. LaPlante The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:12/16/2006 01:26:43 AM MST
Each day, a long blue bus pulled into the roundabout at Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center, off-loading the day's collection of casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. At the hospital in southern Germany, the parade of wounded warriors never ended. It just got longer. About 100 medics in a Salt Lake City-based Army unit returned home Friday from nearly two years of duty at the U.S. hospital where troops evacuated from the battlefronts are treated. Though they were excited to come home, the emotional burden of their mission, especially over the last months, still appeared to weigh heavily on the soldiers. Stepping off the escalator at Salt Lake City International Airport, Pam Longley fell into the arms of family members waiting along the rail. "Being there two years, we had a certain perspective," said Longley, a surgical intensive care nurse. "The last year, especially, has been very bad." The months before departing, she said, were the worst she'd seen. Pentagon data provides a cold testament to Longley's observations: In the three-month period following the arrival of soldiers from the 328th Combat Support Hospital, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan produced about 470 casualties each month. In the three-month period before they departed Germany last week, that rate had risen to nearly 760. September was the worst month for U.S. casualties in nearly two years. October was second-worst. Longley cut her teeth on tragedy in the University of Utah Medical Center Intensive Care Unit, and yet she cried Friday as she recalled the months of seeing patient after patient burned, broken or torn with shrapnel. "It's so much different there," she said. "We all ended up turning to our buddies and friends to get us through." In the final, excruciatingly busy months of her tour of duty, Shannon Green called her best friend, Rachel Paul, in Sandy. "I think I've got post-traumatic stress disorder," Green said. Standing next to Paul near the airport baggage claim on Friday, Green said she came to know her condition as "compassion fatigue." "At some point, you just can't do it anymore," Green said. "I was having anxiety. I wasn't sleeping. I was having bad dreams . . . I saw the blood, the burns, the body parts." Ultimately, she decided, she could handle the pressures of nursing wounded soldiers no longer, and asked for a transfer to the hospital's mother and infant care ward. Melinda Merckley said she was spared from much of the hospital's increased workload over the past few months because she worked in a clinic, rather than in emergency care. "Any time it got really bad, the clinics got slower," she said. "But we always knew, because you hardly ever saw the surgeons." mlaplante@sltrib.com
For month after month, the Utah-based hospital unit saw soaring numbers of soldiers wounded during Mideast duty
By Matthew D. LaPlante The Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:12/16/2006 01:26:43 AM MST
Each day, a long blue bus pulled into the roundabout at Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center, off-loading the day's collection of casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. At the hospital in southern Germany, the parade of wounded warriors never ended. It just got longer. About 100 medics in a Salt Lake City-based Army unit returned home Friday from nearly two years of duty at the U.S. hospital where troops evacuated from the battlefronts are treated. Though they were excited to come home, the emotional burden of their mission, especially over the last months, still appeared to weigh heavily on the soldiers. Stepping off the escalator at Salt Lake City International Airport, Pam Longley fell into the arms of family members waiting along the rail. "Being there two years, we had a certain perspective," said Longley, a surgical intensive care nurse. "The last year, especially, has been very bad." The months before departing, she said, were the worst she'd seen. Pentagon data provides a cold testament to Longley's observations: In the three-month period following the arrival of soldiers from the 328th Combat Support Hospital, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan produced about 470 casualties each month. In the three-month period before they departed Germany last week, that rate had risen to nearly 760. September was the worst month for U.S. casualties in nearly two years. October was second-worst. Longley cut her teeth on tragedy in the University of Utah Medical Center Intensive Care Unit, and yet she cried Friday as she recalled the months of seeing patient after patient burned, broken or torn with shrapnel. "It's so much different there," she said. "We all ended up turning to our buddies and friends to get us through." In the final, excruciatingly busy months of her tour of duty, Shannon Green called her best friend, Rachel Paul, in Sandy. "I think I've got post-traumatic stress disorder," Green said. Standing next to Paul near the airport baggage claim on Friday, Green said she came to know her condition as "compassion fatigue." "At some point, you just can't do it anymore," Green said. "I was having anxiety. I wasn't sleeping. I was having bad dreams . . . I saw the blood, the burns, the body parts." Ultimately, she decided, she could handle the pressures of nursing wounded soldiers no longer, and asked for a transfer to the hospital's mother and infant care ward. Melinda Merckley said she was spared from much of the hospital's increased workload over the past few months because she worked in a clinic, rather than in emergency care. "Any time it got really bad, the clinics got slower," she said. "But we always knew, because you hardly ever saw the surgeons." mlaplante@sltrib.com
