Off to my Little Cruise

Specialties Government

Published

Well everyone the day has come for me to leave and meet my ship. Yes it is very early. I'm gettting that butterfly feeling in my stomach. I'm really excited about my deployment. Its a humanitrian(sp) mission to Southeast Asia for those of you who don't know.

However, I just getting nervous about the unknown of ship life and leaving my husband. Plus, dreading all of the crappy galley food.

I'll keep all of you updated on all my good sea stories.

Well, I guess I should really get in the shower now and make my way to the airport on this fine Navy Day!!!

Wish me luck!

ENS PM

Specializes in L& D, High Risk Antepartum.

The sea sickness gets better. If you can get to the center of the ship there is less rocking there. It is usually the center of the Hanger Deck just be careful of all of those tie down chains. Oh I almost forgot.... Make sure you map out your man overboard route and general quarters route. They establish traffice routes for those and your normal pattern that you take may be disrupted. Starboard is usually up and forward and port is down and back. This holds true even for drills which are quite frequently when out to sea. You don't want to be the newbie trying to go the wrong way getting run over.

ENS Allison

Specializes in ER,ICU and Progressive Care Unit,Peds.

Thanks for the Tips.

I've gotten used to the rocking. Running on a treadmill while the ship is rocking is very interesting to say the least!

No other exciting things yet; and still no pts yet either.

I'll keep you guys in formed on everything.

Later

ENS PM

Specializes in ER, Trauma, US Navy.

ENS PM-

I just got off a float, well I was on vacation in NC and went deep sea fishing. I'm still rocking too. Take care and hang in there.

LCDR(s) Dan

Specializes in ER,ICU and Progressive Care Unit,Peds.

I've gotten used to the rocking for now. But I really want some home cooking and some pts to take care of!!! We are still on our way to Guam. Today we counted and sorted out pills. I know that we won't have this down time for long...but at the same time I'm starting to get stir crazy.

I'll update more later. Thanks for the encouragement from everyone and the well wishes.

ENS PM

Specializes in ER,ICU and Progressive Care Unit,Peds.

sorry it's been so long since i've posted anything. the internet sucks on here, and i don't usually have the time or the patients to wait for the pages on this site to load.

i'll give you all a quick overview of our mission so far. our 1st stop was the philippines. we did many, many surgeries on board while we were there. and we saw thousands of pts a shore at medcaps. medcaps are like primary care visits that we do in country. we take peds drs, medicine drs, dental, and eye docs out to see pts. also, we have the seabees out there doing their jobs too; helping rebuild and build stuff. everyone was very grateful for all that we did while we were there. i realized while i was in the pi that this mission is why i'm a nurse...why i am a navy nurse!!!

after the pi we went to vietnam. not so rewarding there b/c the government limited what we could do there. we couldn't do surgeries there, and for our medcaps we were limited on the meds we could give out. our mission was accomplished there when we pulled into port. it was the 1st time a navy warship had been off the coast of nam since the war. it felt more like a liberty port than a working port. however, i hope we touched at least one person while we were there. hopefully, it opened the door for future missions.

next, was a true liberty port...singapore. i love it there! i cannot go further into my activities there, but i did enjoy the town! i would love to go back there.

right now we are in papua new guinea. we are doing surgeries again along with medcaps and the seabees. this is the 1st country we've been able to give immunizations in. i ran an immunization tent 3 days ago, and my tent gave over 400 immunizations that day. now that’s just plan awesome! the country here is really beautiful, and the people are very inviting and grateful for all that we are doing. we will be going to the solomon islands next. then to new marshall islands.

we haven't done our crossing the line ceremony yet; we have to do it on our way back over. so i'm still a pollywog for now. i'm looking forward to that day of torture and to becoming a shell back. i'm also counting down the days to when i'm back in sunny san diego! life on ship isn't all that bad, but there's no place like home! there is a lot of down time for us nurses on board so i've watched a lot of movies, play many card games, and took many naps! i got lucky with this deployment!

i'll post more when i can.

ens pm

Specializes in ER, Trauma, US Navy.

Glad to hear it's going well, keep the info coming as you can.

LCDR Dan

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