this is VERY coincidental

yesterday, i just happened to meet a (career) medical officer who just got home from tour #2 (yeah, over there....). we actually were talking about the medical care our service people are receiving AS SOON as they are wounded. it was an interesting conversation

(thank you for serving and i mean that from the bottom of my heart)

Medical research is part of the military's combat mission, too

By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer  

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN - On most days of his six-month deployment, surgeon David H. Zonies was lucky just to get outside and see the sun. Often, his only break from work was 30 minutes on the treadmill in the physical therapy department.

Every day, a half-dozen casualties arrived at the Joint Theater Hospital here, nearly all needing surgery in the next 24 hours, many missing limbs, a few barely clinging to life. The 36-year-old Air Force major was the "trauma czar." His job was to coordinate the patients' care and operate on about a third of them.

At the end of October, however, Zonies took two days away from the job. He exchanged blue scrubs for a brown flight suit, flew to Kandahar Airfield 350 miles to the southwest and presented two papers at a medical conference..........