Remembering

"Plane in the water, port side..."


An E-2 Hawkeye flew directly into the water while executing a "wave off" from the deck of an aircraft carrier, our first night in the Adriatic Sea after a rugged trans-atlantic crossing and full day of turnover with the outgoing carrier. Pilots who successfully landed that night described the weather like descending through a bowl of milk into total darkness with no visible horizon. As the E-2 flew over the ramp on final the Landing Signal Officer directed a foul-deck waveoff. The Hawkeye went to full power, climbed straight ahead for less than a minute, then nosed over into the water. Five souls were lost to the sea that night.


Remembering.


"Man overboard, man overboard..."


A young sailor inadvertently walked behind an F-14 Tomcat just as the pilot powered up the engine to begin his taxi to the takeoff spot. The resultant jet blast blew the unsuspecting sailor over the side and into the Red Sea. He probably died when he hit the water sixty feet below the deck. A helo rescue team recovered him shortly, but when they attempted to lift him by his float coat into the aircraft, his limp body slipped through the coat, plummeted back to the sea, and sank.


Remembering.


"There's been a midair..."


Two F-18 Hornets collided during a night refueling over the Arabian Gulf. One pilot successfully ejected and was rescued. The other pilot's broken body was recovered by a British ship, then flown back to the carrier where we conducted the initial post-mortem examination. Our entire medical team suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after that event. We didn't recognize it in ourselves till months later.


Remembering.


"She was shot while jogging..."


A young, dynamic lieutenant professional whom I had known at Bethesda was shot and killed by a sniper in Afghanistan. A non-combatant deployed only to help that nation rebuild its medical infrastructure, she was brutally murdered while jogging inside the security of the base. She left behind a young family.


Remembering.


Such memories, and millions like them around the world, give life to the parades and flags and speeches and news clips punctuating Memorial Day. This day is not about external symbols, much less about a day off for the mall or beach. 


Real people really died. Each had personal and mostly private reasons for being where they were when death found them. Whatever those reasons, they paid the ultimate price.


And what of those living real people left behind, whose lives changed forever through untimely loss? They continue to pay. Is the price right for them?


We in public service, and indeed all Americans, have a solemn duty to make it right. We must remember the prices paid, and we must not squander our hard won freedom. American core values must endure. Otherwise these and millions of others shall have died in vain.


Remembering...

When I Half-Died

Heart rate of 12! I see it on the monitor just behind me.


MY heart rate! Not compatible with life!


My vision closes down, tunnel-like. I'm sinking through the operating table on which I lay, both arms stretch out and tied down, crucifixion style.


I need atropine.


The surgeon's voice, "Cough, Mike." I cough. I see the resulting blip on the monitor. Cough, cough, cough. Blip, blip, blip. To live, I must keep coughing.


Heart rate up to 30. Barely compatible with life, but I'm not sinking any more. I can talk.


"I need atropine!" I wonder how I can thump my own chest. But I can't move my arms. And now I descend again.


The voice, "Give him 0.04 milligrams of atropine." That's pre-anesthetic dose! Not good here.


"MORE atropine!" I demand in grave voice. "Half to one milligram!"


The voice, "Give him 0.5 milligrams of atropine IV."


I've stopped sinking. My vision is coming back. I'm lucid. I no longer need to run my own resuscitation. My heart rate is up to 60. I'm alive!


I remembered this story last night as a friend described his recent hernia repair. I recalled the time, now over 20 years ago in my pre-Navy days, when I tasted near-death while undergoing a similar procedure. I practiced emergency medicine at that hospital. I knew the anesthesia staff fairly well. Somewhat haughtily I reasoned that a surgeon could not kill me on the operating table if he tried, but an anesthesiologist could do so without half trying. Being an active triathlete at the time, I considered myself beyond healthy. So I eschewed general or even spinal anesthesia and elected to have the procedure under local anesthetic only.


The local didn't work so well. I was uncomfortable from the instant the knife hit my skin. When the surgeon manipulated the peritoneal sac, I experienced an intense vaso-vagal reaction. My vagus nerve reacted reflexively to the intense discomfort by slowing down my heart rate. My triathlon-trained resting pulse in the 40s left little margin, and hence my near-death experience. By my own choice, I was the only one in the room with recent training and experience in resuscitation. So I labored to fight off the impending darkness to direct my own life saving. 


"Physician, heal thyself."


Fortunately, it all worked out. A post-operative cardiac evaluation rendered the diagnosis of "Athlete's Heart Syndrome." I was pretty proud of that diagnosis at the time. Retrospectively, "Arrogant Doctor Syndrome" might have been more appropriate.


In spite of all the peri-operative dramatics, the hernia repair has held up just fine over the years. The surgeon, at least, knew to stay within his skill boundaries. Should the occasion for a repeat procedure occur any time in my life now, his former arrogant patient will most certainly trust his anesthesia colleagues to exercise their skills as well.


That particular emergency physician truly has no interest in healing himself again.

Resurfacing

Been underway for a few days, mostly beneath the cloud of a "limited bandwidth" environment, meaning no internet and very little e-mail access. For some of my younger shipmates this is a crisis of major proportions. For me, it's back to the future.

This is my third Navy assignment to sea duty, each with expanding envelopes of connectivity from the sea to family, friends, and the rest of the world. Today I feel as though I've resurfaced, perhaps temporarily, from the Twilight Zone.

My first deployment as an air wing flight surgeon in a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier occurred in the late spring and early summer of 1993. We had no internet, no e-mail, and no phone service. We relied on snail mail while underway and pay phones when ashore in a foreign country. We numbered our handwritten letters sequentially, because they would seldom arrive in chronological order. So if the last letter I received from home was #6 when everyone was doing fine, and then I got #9 saying "We're all better now," I had to wait patiently, and somewhat nervously, for the rest of the story in either #7 or #8. Except sometimes one or both of them never came, leaving me indefinitely clueless. Some of that cluelessness persists to the present day.

Prior to the deployment I looked forward to the port visit schedule, a typical "Summer Med Cruise" idyll .  Many of the crew booked plane tickets and hotels for spouses to join them in exotic ports of call in Mediterranean playgrounds. But the old salts knew better and saved their money. Thanks to bigots in Bosnia and some dude named Saddam in the Middle East, most of those port visits were cancelled. During the six month deployment we spent all but 18 days at sea...without e-mail, phones, or internet. Whenever we did actually get off the ship for a port visit, the first thing that most of us did was wait for hours in crowded lines at pay phones for the chance to call home, collect. Kathy was thrilled to hear my voice when she answered the phone, disappointed to hang up a half hour later, and livid when she got the $300 phone bill at the end of the month. We were not exactly flush at the time.

"Don't call!" she said when I embarked in another aircraft carrier for my second deployment in the late fall/early winter of 1997. "It's too hard to hang up, and we can't afford the bill." She was right, of course, as usual. BUT, at least we had e-mail then. So even though we still perferred the romance of writing actual letters in longhand, sequentially numbered of course, we also had the relative luxury of real time e-mail communication when and if we wanted or needed. The ship also had phones available, but you had to buy a phone card to use them. I recall they were some outrageous price like $10 a minute, which no doubt included the MWR cut. So I didn't call. Well, except for Christmas Eve when I got to use one of the ship's POTS ("Plain Old Telephone Service") lines  for free to call Kathy in Michigan where her large extended family was gathered at her parents' house. "Why are you calling?" she scolded. "You're interrupting the present opening." (This was really a big deal in her family then. I would have been upset too.) So I never called again during that deployment.

Now I'm on a highly sophisticated communications platform, where I have ready access to e-mail, multiple telephone lines, internet, Facebook, Twitter, and other cybercoms that I don't begin to understand. But the bandwidth-challenged environment of the last four days has sent me back to the future to that first deployment, where I wrote a lot and accomplished a number of goals like earning a surface warfare designator and logging almost 100 hours of flight time off the deck. Amazing what you can get done when you're not able to surf the net. Same is true of the last four days. Wrote a lot, read a lot, accomplished a lot.

Now we are back to normal communications. Haven't exactly rushed back to the internet. I plan to continue writing, reading, and accomplishing some other goals. And, no I don't plan to call home until we are back at the pier.

Still Speaking of Sports...Following K-Dog

"Kay-Dawg in the house!"

Such was the acclaim from the gymnasium bleachers when the Catholic High women's volleyball team took the court, anchored by one Kathryn Cavender, aka Katie, aka Kate, aka K-Dog:

Now how does a girl who quit growing in junior high, who stands barely over 5 feet tall, anchor a women's volleyball team? The same way she guided her 8th grade basketball team to the league championship in Pensacola, with sheer guts, determination, and an indomitably infectious winning spirit.

Her younger brother Matt was not the only one cut from a sport starting high school after moving to a new city. Katie, James, and Matt all endured the rigors of frequent military moves, meeting and making new friends, and competing in sports with/against non-military youngsters who had grown accustomed to playing together over years of developing skills and teamwork. Following her triumphant final basketball season at St. John's school in Pensacola, Katie confidently tried out for the freshman team at Catholic High School in Norfolk/Virginia Beach...and got cut. Watching the tryouts, we strongly suspected that this team had already been selected before the first ball dribbled onto the court. So much for new kids' chances.

But Kate did what Kate always does in adverse situations. She sucked it up, held her head high, and moved on. Ultimately she led the women's volleyball team as its premier setter and captain, first as a JV and later as varsity. That same indomitable determination and leadership that spirited her previous basketball teammates to higher achievement infected her volleyball compatriots as well. No surprise to us, in her senior year she earned well deserved recognition as the team's Most Valuable Player. Proudly, her Grandpa K was there with her brothers to watch her receive the award.

The challenges experienced in sports competition do prepare one to deal with life. In sports we not only learn about fair play and teamwork and a winning attitude. We learn about ourselves. We learn the breadth and depth of our talent, our fortitude, our imagination, and our perseverance. We learn how to raise the level of our game and find new determination when faced with difficult odds. We figure out how to reach deep inside ourselves to find our own right stuff and true grit. We discover how to win, or at least how to lose with dignity and aplomb. Whatever the outcome, whatever the final score, we are better men or women for having competed at all.

Honing those positive qualities and leadership skills that she so aptly demonstrated in sports competition, Katie has continued to achieve success throughout her young life, in college, in business, in grad school, and in mature relationships.  Kate's high school MVP award presaged a series of similar recognitions as she excels in the game of life. Just one example (because I have a photo) is her sociology honor society induction at the College of William and Mary, where she earned not one but two bachelor's degrees in four years.

K-Dog: A true winner and leader, and a consistent MVP, regardless of the game or the situation. Whatever the challenge, you want her on your team.

Speaking of Sports...Watching Jimbo

When Matt was still in the formative years of his youth sports career, his older sister and brother were in their prime. Among their most loyal fans was one Stuart K, aka "Grandpa", who at ages 92 - 93 seldom missed a game or a match:

James, aka "Jimbo" to Stuart, played basketball in elementary school and JV basketball and football in high school. He enjoyed moderate success in both.

James' tour de force was youth soccer. He played stellar defense on a team appropriately named "Anarchy." A strong, cohesive and talented team, Anarchy won most of their games. The opposition always had trouble getting the ball past "Mr. D.", aka "Pez Man." James played an aggressive game, with an uncanny ability to spot the ball's ultimate forward progress, and to arrive at that spot in time to send la pelota the other way. He relinquished ground or position to no one, suffering at least one concussion as a result. (He recovered without sequelae.)

"Jimbo" enjoyed a special relationship with his nonagenarian grandfather. Stuart recognized and emphasized all that was good about James. Such was his nature. He just had that way of making youth feel special and valued...even if it was nothing more dramatic than showing up, wheelchair and Parkinsonian traits notwithstanding, to watch you play. James, being a kind and loving soul in his own right, returned that special sense of regard and respect. He was always there to help out, including the sometimes daunting task of helping his grandfather get up into the bleachers to watch his sister play volleyball. (A future post coming on that.)

Some time has passed since those days. Granpa has been gone for over seven years, and James is now a young adult. The lives of these two men interconnected for just a couple of years. Hopefully the memories of that special relationship will never fade.

(Missing from this anthology is a prized photo of James in his football uniform with his maternal grandmother. I just can't find it. Hopefully it will turn up to be added later. 

Finally, my older children may be heaving a collective sigh of relief that their similar exploits occurred before the digital age. Albeit not memorialized on digital media and not postable on blog or FB, those exploits are certainly relished as well.)

Watching Matt

Watching Matt play sports: Not always easy, not always kind, but usually good and with a dynamite ending.

We often cringed at his very young age soccer games when he stood planted in one spot, only to move from there when the ball approached him. His soccer career peaked early when he scored his first and last goal at the age of six. He kicked the ball off from mid-field, from whence it rolled past several distracted meandering boys and through the goal...a total distance of about 15 yards.


We later agonized for him as a first grade basketball player when the game was stopped while the coach tied his shoe for him. He just didn't have that psychomotor skill yet. We fumed five years and three schools later when, with shoes now securely tied, he waved his arms wide open under the basket yet no one would pass him the ball. He was the military kid, the new kid, and these boys had played together since first grade. He wore the same uniform as they, but he was never really on their team.


In baseball he played for the Marlins, the White Sox, and the Cubs. The high point of his baseball career was when his team won the league championship and got to be on the field at Harbor Park with the Norfolk Tides. He never quite mastered the "bat off the shoulder" approach to hitting, but he relished his first winning team.

Later in Bethesda a Navy pediatrician suggested that he try karate. The discipline and routine of martial arts would not only help his psychomotor coordination skills, but would also assist his focus ability. Indeed, he excelled and moved quickly through the ranks. He attended two different schools in two different cities in two different states, each with its own philosophy and style. In Norfolk he met one of the best coaches he would ever have in any sport...a man who inspires and instills self-confidence through competence and dedication. 

But Matt is a military kid, after all. He moved to Japan before he completed the course that would surely have earned him a black belt. 


When he got to Japan and started high school he elected to forego his martial arts career to play football. Football? Had he ever seen a game, let alone touched an actual football? "Never mind," said we. We are not star-struck sports parents. We don't expect to fund our retirement with his major league salary. We just want him to have fun and fully tap whatever potential he wants. So, okay, football it is. He tried out for the JV team as a freshman. He got cut. Cut!?! That had never happened before at this DoD high school. They had never cut anyone...until that year. He was one of only four boys, all new to the school, who didn't get to join the team.

So he just went and got a varsity letter instead. A wonderful man who worked for me arranged for Matt to join the varsity as team photographer. He excelled. His films were used to market graduating seniors for football scholarships. He earned that varsity letter without ever taking a hit on the field. More cogently, he studied and learned the sport.


The next year he eschewed the video camera for another shot at playing the actual game. He gutted it out and landed a spot on the JV team. The season was one of his best in any sport. He impressed his coaches with his spirit, dedication, and enthusiasm. By the end of the season, after only partial playing time on defense and special teams, he achieved his pre-season goal of playing wide receiver.

The spring of his freshman year he ran track, "to get in shape for football." The next year he ran track again, because he liked it. As a recreational runner myself, I truly admired his willingness and dedication to compete against himself, to constantly strive for a better time. Perseverance.

But, he is a military child. For his junior year he moved from a DoD school in Japan with 300 students to a Catholic high school in Virginia with 1300 students. Most of those had known each other for years, and did not readily welcome new kids into their inner circles. It was not an auspicious year. He didn't even consider football. Instead, he ran cross-country, and his times steadily improved as the season rolled on. That year, in addition to ubiquitous mom and dad, his sister got to watch him too.

And then Fortune smiled on the entire family when we got to return to Japan for his senior year. He made the varsity football team. In professional or NCAA parlance, it was a "rebuilding year." Not as much fun as that winning JV season. Dad was deployed for most of the season, but did manage to catch one game by riding the Shinkansen all the way to Misawa and back over a brief labor day port period. Would do it again. Would love to have the chance to do it again.

Now, with graduation and a move on to college looming, this era draws inexorably to a close as Matt achieves a new level of personal excellence in his final season of his final high school sport, track. Consistently bettering his times in the 800 and 1500 yard events, he peaked by setting personal records in both events at the last meet, the last event, the last sport that his parents will likely ever get to see him play.

So just like that, it ends. That six-year old boy who accidentally kicked a soccer ball through a miniature goal 12 years ago is now a young man standing on a podium receiving his ribbon. In the interim he's attended 8 different schools in 3 different states and 2 countries. He has played six different sports with varying degrees of success and acceptance. He's felt that proverbial agony of defeat and thrill of victory. He's been very up and very down and all stages in between. 


Through those years he never once gave up, never once quit trying, never once quit learning, and never once quit believing in himself and his ability to achieve his goal. I call that commitment, and I call it courage. And, Matt, of whom I am as proud as a father can be, I call a WINNER!

Beisuboru

Home again after the 10 week deployment. Truncated re-entry in progress. As I take some time to regroup and adjust to a new writing environment, here's a look back at Japanese baseball as the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks took on the Chiba Lotte Marines at the Yahoo Dome in Fukuoka, Japan:

The game is the same as the U.S. variety, 

but the level of Japanese participation and enthusiasm makes U.S. games almost soporific by comparison. Organized bleacher cheering sections motivate each successive hitter as he comes to the plate. The 7th inning stretch features cheerleaders, mascots, and the release of thousands of balloons all over the dome.

They've figured out the best way to market and sell  beer. Each brand has its own vendor.

But in the end, just as in America, the team that scores the most runs wins:

Ordering Food in Russia

When ordering food in a Japanese restaurant, one has several options:

A) Ask for and receive a menu written in English.
B) Ask for a waitperson who understands English. There's usually at least one who does.
B) Even if the menu is only in Japanese, point to one of the many pictures displaying specific menu items.
C) Point to the ubiquitous plastic food models in the display window of the restaurant.
D) Fake it by adding a "u" sound to the end of the food's English name. E.g., "steak-u".
E) Bring along a native Japanese speaker, or your son who can read katakana.

In Russia, at least in a relatively remote city like Vladivostok, most restaurant personnel do not speak English, the menus don't have pictures, there are no plastic food models to be found, and adding a suffix to the English word just engenders puzzled looks from the waitperson.


One can usually get traditional Russian fare, such as borsh or vodka, because the Americanized Russian is still understandable. But try getting a steak or salad. Did I already mention puzzled looks?


Nevertheless, being clever world travelling sailors, we discovered the following cheat sheet on the internet. This got us through several meals:

But there were some notable challenges. Pointing to the various generic food items on this chart usually resulted in follow-on questions, the substance of which was ambiguous to us, resulting in equally obscure answers. For instance, did he just say "fried chicken" or grilled chicken with "fries"? Did he ask how I want my beef cooked? Did he understand when I said, "medium"? Were we even having the same conversation? Eventually you just say "da" and wait to see what shows up from the kitchen.


Not surprising then, when the steak I thought I ordered turned out to be:

Grilled pork chop. Very tasty. Not steak.







Fortunately, ordering dessert was easier. Most waiters understood "ice cream," for which Russia is rightly famous. In one particular establishment it came with a choice of syrup, fruit, or chocolate. One could even combine toppings, hence the really delicious vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries and "fruit syrup" depicted below. One devoted ice cream-o-phile among us had to have two....twice.

Most easily understood, thank goodness, was the intent when ordering "cappuccino" or "whisky." The photo below shows a particularly pleasing combination of creme brulee (prounounced "creme brulee" in Russian), along with cappuccino and Jamesons (the latter obtained by pointing at the bottle over the bar).

A truly motivated foodie can eat very well in Russia. It just takes an open mind and a little patience. Also, if you patronize the same establishment for several consecutive evenings you eventually win favored customer status and get to sample bonus delicacies that you would never have known how to order.

Yummm.

Утомлённые солнцем? (Burnt by the Sun?)

During the transit to Vladivostok, our Fine and Foreign Films group presented the 1994 Russian film entitled Burnt by the Sun (Utomlyonnye solntsem). Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this movie was directed by and starred Nikita Mikhalkov. In terms of iconic film industry families, the Mikhalkovs are the Russian equivalent to America's Barrymore family.

In 1936 Russia, revolutionary war hero Colonel Sergei Petrovich Kotov enjoys an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife, Maroussia, and six-year-old daughter Nadia (played by Mikhalkov's daughter, Nadezhda Mikhalkova), as well as other engaging family and friends. Visiting unexpectedly from Moscow, Cousin Dmitri (Mitya) charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled. At the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night presaging doom, he knows that Dmitri has a darker purpose for his ostensibly social visit. The film ends with Mitya and a couple of thugs carrying Kotov off to the Gulag under the orders of his former patron, Joseph Stalin.  This is a provocative and emotionally compelling movie that entertains but not in the "feel good at the end" way.

In April, 2010, Mikhalkov co-wrote, directed, and starred in a sequel, Burnt by the Sun 2 (Utomlyonnye solntsem 2). In 1941, Colonel Kotov has miraculously survived the death sentence and Stalin's Purge. He now fights on the front-lines as a private. His daughter, Nadia, is a nurse risking her own life to save others. In the war-torn nation even former enemies must fight together to defend their land against the threat of fascism. People stand up united for the sake of victory.

Unlike the original film, this sequel flopped at the box office in Russia. Could that be a sign of cultural change over the last six years? Are military heroics no longer appropriate in this nation now a decade removed from the Soviet regime?

The sequel movie poster prominently adorns a theater in downtown Vladivostok. That movie house  sits across the main street from the parade ground that hosted the Victory Day Parade, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviets. The monument depicted below represents the dedication of that parade ground to "The Fighters for the Soviet Power in the Far East," similar to the fighters portrayed in the movie sequel.

Based on the positive public reaction to the Victory Day parade, not only in Vladivostok but throughout Russia, national spirit and pride abound, as do respect for and confidence in the military.



Perhaps the unsuccessful debut of Mikhalkov's World War II era sequel to his original Academy Award Winner has less to do with theme and content, and more with competition from the other films showing with it...capitalism at its finest, so to speak. The four posters below appear just to Mikhalkov's right on the same theater facade. Burnt by the Sun 2 vies for viewers with several American entries, including "Iron Man Two."

Given only enough rubles to afford one movie for your weekend date, which would you pick?