The Taliban Have Better Tourniquets Than Me

For the years between GTMO and retirement, I managed. I continued going to therapy, or at least attempting to. One problem with therapy in the military is that either you or your therapist is always moving. It is very difficult to achieve continuity of care. I did intakes with six therapists in four years. We never got past the beginning. It makes it feel like no one is listening. It’s extremely frustrating, and I became inconsistent with my visits.

 A navy psychiatrist once told me to think of a calming memory, a “happy place,” to think about to reduce my anxiety in social situations. “Perhaps a childhood memory. A time when you felt safe.” I was so angry that I wanted to punch the guy. I couldn’t come up with one single happy memory. And I sure as hell couldn’t remember a time, either in my childhood or in the past decade of my life, when I felt safe. Something he might have known if I’d ever gotten past an intake appointment.

But I made it. I was at my last duty station before retirement, Camp Pendleton. I usually got to pick my OR assignments since I was now a crotchety old goat that no one wanted to argue with. Orthopedics was my favorite service, so I was usually in the ortho room. There’s only one problem with that. Tourniquets. Ortho uses tourniquets.

We had the tourniquets built by the lowest bidder. They did the job, but I hated them. The buttons didn’t make sense. Sometimes it didn’t respond. The display was tiny. Trash. In Kandahar we had the Cadillac of tourniquet machines. Intuitive, large, touchscreen display that worked even they were covered in blood and betadine. They inflated super-fast too.

So every day in the OR, I’m picturing the Taliban with my Cadillac tourniquet machine while I’m fighting with this piece of shit back in California. Every single time I used one of those tourniquets, I wanted to put my fist through a wall. Goddamned Taliban have better tourniquets than me.

(Legal disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what, if any, medical equipment was left behind in Afghanistan. But the mere thought that the Taliban might be sitting on my bougie Kandahar tourniquet machines while I was stuck using inferior ones back in the States was enough to infuriate me.)

And that is the best way I can describe how my life was going a full ten years after being deployed to Kandahar. Frequently hypervigilant. Sometimes depressed or numb. Always angry.