Voices from the field

Abstract

Just a word about toilets. Something we tend to take for granted back home. We have it pretty good at Ibn Sina. For the most part they work pretty well, never mind that we cannot put any toilet paper into them (Fig. 20.1). Tends to clog them up with predictably disastrous results. We do have plenty of them, however, which is more than can be said of the line units in the various forward operating bases, or FOBs, scattered around the country. "Hey Doc, you know how good you got it?" Oh, yeah, I know. Our water is trucked in. We do not rely on the Baghdad water supply. It is the same for the electricity. You can imagine how difficult it would be to run a hospital with the inconsistency of the Baghdad power grid. In our isolated world in the IZ, water, power, and supplies are pretty consistent. The steady throb of generators, so constant a sound that I no longer hear it, reminds me of what it takes to keep it this way. Occasionally a generator goes down and we have to scramble a bit to keep things running⋯ such as ventilators and the like. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2009.