Combat Darts Anyone?

***Editor's Note***

John's Blog is back. He had to make some minor changes to previous posts and comments in order to adhere to certain operational security and confidentiality rules. He would like to apologize to the followers of his blog for the brief hiatus and is happy to be back...bitches.

Every Thursday the FST has a "game night" as long as we don't have patients. Typically we have a dart tournament, play texas hold 'em, board games, or play x-box. We've been doing this since the beginning of the deployment and darts is, by far, the most popular event. Many of the team members have been getting pretty good at darts (not me) so last week I just threw out the idea of making it more challenging by forcing everyone to wear their body armor while throwing (never thinking that anyone would go for it). Well, everyone thought it was a great idea so this week's tournament was called "Combat Darts".

Just to give you an idea of how popular darts has become here we actually have a commissioner, Cheuk Hong, and Assistant Commissioner, Shane Lawson, and they have set some basic ground rules (see photo below). Even the Romanian Dentist, Doc Cris, plays.

Take special note of violation 2, hitting the wall. People often miss the entire board (especially me) and 5 pushups really isn't that big of a deal. However, imagine those 5 pushups with 40 or 50 pounds of body armor...not so easy.

Me Doing One of My Many Pushups

We also have a trophy that goes to the winner of each tournament. It's one trophy and it works sort of like Lord Stanley's Cup in that it is passed from winner to winner. As you can see from the pictures, Doc Z was the winner of the last tournament and he came to this week's tourney proudly displaying the trophy. Although, he had to give it up to the new Champion, Shane Lawson.

Z

Z Presenting Trophy to Shane

Doc Funk Action Shot (note the commish observing in the background)

Speaking of Lord Stanley's Cup, what a great final game - ay? Too bad the Flyers couldn't have pulled it off. I wanted to poke fun at Jeremy Roenick for sobbing post-game, but I've bawled here much worse than that, so he gets a pass from me.

I also wanted to mention a very touching act from one of our corpsmen, Doc Funk. I mentioned in a previous blog how little the Afghans have and how guilty I feel about having to cut off their clothes. Well, apparently Doc Funk felt the same way so he petitioned a t-shirt company, "80's Tees" to donate shirts for the Afghans who have theirs cut off. The shirts arrived yesterday in the middle of a short lull between the 8 trauma patients we received and one of them was this awesome Steelers t-shirt. We were having a rough day so as soon as I saw the shirt, and how small it was, I knew I had to try it on; 1)Because it was a Steelers shirt and 2) Because I thought it would bring a smile to our teams faces. Here are a couple of pics.

When I wake up tomorrow I will only have 89 days until I see my beautiful wife and loveable dog again. Judi, I am too excited to sleep! And I love you more than you can imagine.

Take Care,

John

p.s. please pray for my brother Scott. He's a Captain in the US Army who has served his country honorably for the past 18 years and is going through a very rough time in his life right now.