Packages for The Kids in Afghanistan In Honor of Tim Hetherington

Last night, my former boss now friend, Laura, and I were talking on the phone about Tim. We started laughing when we were remembering Tim. Little known facts about Tim:

• He promoted Laura from COL to GEN when they got to the Oscars.
• He is the only person who could drive and make it seem as though it was a galloping horse.
• He called me, "Our secret weapon."
• He was funny.
• He ate almost as fast as SGM Caldwell. (But remember, SGM Caldwell is a paratrooper, hence trained for that).
  
• When he spoke of his soul mate, his eyes lit up. She was very, very special to him.
  

This week a group of us have been packaging boxes to send to The Hubs. We're sending them with fond memories of Tim.
I haven't written about his deployment because there's not much I can share. But, he phoned the day before last -a rare occurrence. It was so good to hear him! At the end of a very quick call, he asked for a few things. Vitamins, fruit snacks, coloring books, crayons, notebooks, pencils --all for the kids who are in the hospital. As it was when he was deployed to Kunar, the majority of their patients are children. The enemy shoots, hurts, and blows up the children. In fact, when I ran a statistic that Sebastian told me: "83.3% of all Afghan locals are hurt by the Taliban," The Hubs responded, "If not more." He walks around the hospital and wards, does his rounds, takes care of the kids, his pockets full of things to give to the ones not on ventilators. "Anything to help make the stay better," he says.

Kids bear the brunt of war.
One of the best insights into this is from Chris Coppola, M.D., a former USAF Surgeon who did two deployments to Iraq. You can get his book "A Pediatric Surgeon In Iraq" and read about his experiences. Kids are always memorable patients. I'm sure every physician who has deployed remembers them.