Day Fifty-Three

6 October 2006
The last few days have been pretty busy! Yesterday morning we had a CONREP (connected replenishment) with a supply ship. We received about 40 pallets of various supplies including IV fluid, ice cream, and lettuce. They were sent from the other ship via span wire. Waiting on our ship were the forklifts and a long line of sailors waiting to carry the stuff to the correct supply hold. A helo also did a VERTREP (vertical replenishment), which entails the helo picking up a pallet suspended from a long cord and depositing it on the deck of our ship. It was all quite the production! It is nice, though, because last night we had fresh broccoli and yummy bananas. You have got to love replenishment!

Later yesterday afternoon, we were informed that a sailor had been injured on another ship and was en-route to us for immediate treatment. Apparently the corpsman on the other ship was very concerned about him because when we received the gentleman it looked like first aid was done on the walk to the helo—a splint, an IV, and blood everywhere! The sailor was in pretty bad shape and the other ship obviously did not have the means to take care of him like we do (plus we were not that far away). The guy had abrasions and lacerations many places, was yelling that he wanted water to drink and repeatedly asked if he had all his fingers. He had a very large laceration on the top of his head, a very large contusion over his right rib cage and right shoulder, a splint on his left arm, and several other smaller lacerations and contusions. He ended up having a depressed skull fracture and thankfully nothing else. We sewed him up (great opportunities for our corpsman) and calmed him down a bit. However, he continued to remain a bit confused. He also spiked a fever later yesterday evening and we threw all the different IV antibiotics we had for broad coverage against developing meningitis. He was picked up by a surgeon who came on a shore-based Marine helo this morning (one of the docs who came with the surgeon was a guy who did internship with me at Portsmouth—it was nice to see a familiar face). The sailor will then most likely be transferred to a plane and be brought to a neurosurgeon’s OR in Europe by the end of the day. Poor kid. We never did get the whole story of what happened to him—he had a set of odd injuries so you have got to wonder…He definitely is not going to remember.