Dustmares

Dustmare = a stress dream including Iraqi dust storms.

Do you ever get those reoccurring dreams that youre falling? Or perhaps you are continually late to your morning meeting no matter how hard you try? Well, in Iraq stress dreams are little different.

On two different occasions (both surrounding dust storms) I had what I’ve now term “dustmares”. The first one was about 3 weeks ago close to when we first got here. The dust was really bad that day. I remember waking up in the middle of the night thinking to myself, this dust is really bad here in my CHU. So I covered my face with my blanket, using it to filter the dust out of the air. That didn’t last too long, since I had a hard time breathing.

Last week we had a really bad dust storm. Visibility was at an all time low. Flights were cancelled because of the thickness of the dust. I pretty much went straight home after work and sat around there until it was time for bed. I woke up to use the restroom in the middle of the night. I realized that outside the dust had not settle at all, in fact it seemed (to me anyways at 2am) that it was getting worse. When I got back in my CHU it “seemed” that a lot of the dust was on the inside as well. It seemed that we were breathing in all of this horrible dust. I got in bed and couldn’t breath. So I decided that it was a great idea to put on my gas mask and sleep with that on. I put in on and hopped back into bed, pulling the covers up to my gas mask. I laid there tossing and turning trying to get comfortable with that dern gas mask on. I tried to sleep for about a half an hour. The air I was breathing was finally dust free but I couldn’t sleep with the gas mask on. It was very uncomfortable. When I pulled it off I took in a big breath and thought to myself. “I’m going crazy, it’s not dusty in here at all”. I put the mask down and went back to sleep.

The dust around here will make you do crazy things.