…tonight I spent my evening in the galley and scullery. For the first hour I served all the enlisted guys and gals, standing in front of a hot line and wondering how they do it all the time! Our ship has CS (culinary specialists) and FSAs (food service attendants). The CSs are the cooks…this is their rating (aka job). The FSAs are the guys that fill a spot that makes the ship run (food prep, serving, cleaning dishes, laundry…). Not only are they responsible for the food service, galley and mess deck cleaning but also cleaning the heads (bathrooms) in the officer berthing and a thousand other little tasks! They typically work from 0430 till 2200 on their long days and then 0430 till 1300 on their “short” days. For my second hour I helped in the kitchen part, prepping pieces of cake, helping make soup and swabbing the decks (mopping the wet spots). I also got to help out the in scullery (where they do dishes). Five minutes in and I was sweating up a storm! I worked on the other side (clean side) of the dishwasher where they hang a thermometer to monitor heat …it was 92deg!!!! All and all it was a great experience. We should have more chances to help out and give back a little to the FSAs who work so hard! I try really hard to always say hi and thank them for everything they do.
My 0515 spin class has been going well! Avg about 10 ppl in each class so far…although I went this AM to my roomie’s class (Marissa the PAO) and she was packed! Gotta get more music! J On my off spin days I try to run. Hoping to run a half marathon in Guam on my own. It will be kind of cool to add a territory to my list of 50 half marathons in 50 states. I mostly workout in the AM but by afternoon feel lazy because everyone else is just now going to workout. Oh well, I still haven’t convinced myself to do “2 a days”.
Only 2 more days till Guam. It’s amazing that I’ve only been gone 2 weeks. It really feels like a month! Now I understand how hard deployment is on people …where life continues for everyone at home, the people that deploy really rely on hearing from home to feel connected.
We’re setting up the wards still. Getting supplies from the main supply “barn” has been a mess! They have to inventory everything, they request our supply list , then collect everything and then deliver and distribute. The hardest part is the description they give on the supply list may or may not be anything close to what you’re used to calling it. Still haven’t received anything…they keep pushing the date. Now they say right after Guam we’ll get everything. (As long as its not the day before Vietnam, I’m happy.)
We’re at approximately 400 staff members on board now…that includes nurses, doctors, corpsmen, MSC, admin, anciillary staff, Damage control (aka firefighters), helo pilots, force protection and MAs, etc… But in Guam we are expected to swell to approx 1000-1100 members! If you think the showers are crowded now, oh gawd!
Staff dynamics are beginning to take shape…right now we have 3 corpsmen, HN Peatvienna, HN Cunningham and HN Cummings. An HN is an E3…3rd level of enlisted. They have taking a rating (job) but have not had to take an advancement exam at this time to promote. Most have little experience but are ready to learn. Only Cunningham has had pediatric experience so we’ll be teaching a lot. Then we have 2 LDS (Latter Day Saints/Mormon) nurses, Lizzy from UK and Amy from Canada. Both have tons of peds experience and are awesome, friendly personalities. There are 3 Navy nurses right now, LCDR Benfield (our DIVO aka Boss) and LCDR Partridge (a reservist that will be with us until Singapore) and myself. Neither Benfield or Partridge have worked peds in a while but both requested pediatrics. We expect a few more in Guam and hopefully we’ll be fully staffed. We hope to be able to take on 35 pts a day (7 pts for a nurse + HM during days). Standby to standby.
I’m really enjoying meeting so many different people on board. It’s amazing the jobs people take on to make the Navy go… Also amazing the backgrounds people come from and how –for the most part- they join together for a common goal. Everyone has been very willing to teach me their jobs and help me understand what their parts are in Big Navy. We’ve started studying for our SWMDO (Surface Warfare Medical Officer pin) and have to learn a lot about the Big Navy and our own ship…it’s a lot! But very interesting …
I’m on DNS (directorate of nursing services) watch tonight. Hopefully no one gets hurt or falls out…otherwise I get woken up and have to admit them to the ICU. (All staff/shipboard admissions go to ICU regardless of their medical status.) We rotate every morning/night and have DNS duty about once a week. This weekend I’ll have ship section duty…I’ll tell you about that later. Goodnight!
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