Reporter ends up a patient

LANDSTUHL, GERMANY - When the scalpel sliced into soft skin behind my left ear, my concern over the National Guard public relations officer who was waiting for me vanished. I knew she must be wondering where I was but all that went away as the blade cut deeper into the unanesthetized tissue.

I closed my eyes and grimaced, listening to the sound of the cutting.

This was not what I had expected from my tour of Landstuhl Medical Center - the largest American hospital outside the country and the first stop for most of the seriously wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lt. Col. Sidney Van Assche, the deployment commander for the 152nd's medical unit had volunteered to operate on my ear, which turned out to have a sebacious cyst.

"Yeah, just like I thought," he said, blotting with gauze as blood dripped from my chin. "It's pretty badly infected."

Sporting a bandage on the side of my face the size of a Java Joe's scone, I ran off to find my escort, Public Affairs Officer April Conway. We planned to return to the hospital at 7 a.m. - in time to meet the day's first busload of wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Karl Horeis is a reporter for the Nevada Appeal on assignment with the Nevada Air National Guard in Germany. Reach him at khoreis@nevadaappeal.com.