What's Important: Being Present.

Abstract

“How was deployment?” As a military orthopaedist, this is a question I got frequently from family, friends, and colleagues after recently returning from overseas. Many curious orthopaedic colleagues wanted to know what type of cases I had completed, whether I thought service overseas made me a better surgeon, or what it was like to be “over there helping all those injured service-members.” When I answer, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was not deployed to an area that is recognized as a “combat zone.” The closest I got to trauma while deployed were a couple of ankle fractures. I saw plenty of clinic patients and walk-ins with various aches and pains, but it was not a very busy orthopaedic practice. This relatively slow pace left me with a lot of time to think. I thought mostly about my family. While I was fortunate enough to have access to technology that made keeping in touch with them pretty easy from where I was stationed, the bottom line is that I was thousands of miles and multiple time zones away from the people I love most. Amid this longing to be with my family, I realized that it was not so much that I wanted to talk to them. I simply missed their presence. And that is …