“I probably saw more trauma in that year than an emergency room doctor would see in a big city,” she said.
It’s the second tour to Iraq for the Harker Heights native, and since that first trip into combat, the mission for the physician’s assistant has changed.
During her first tour to Iraq in 2006, Brown served as the platoon leader at a Baghdad clinic where she saw the blood of soldiers and civilians on a daily basis while attending to the severely wounded.
On this second tour, things have been different.
These days, Brown finds herself serving as more of a teacher and a mentor to American soldiers and Iraqis than she ever has.
“I play a different role than I did the last time,” Brown said.
The change for her personally has been as gradual as the change in the overall mission itself.
“You see the progress on the street,” she said. “The children come out to wave to the soldiers and the vehicles, whereas at the beginning of this deployment it was not like that.”
She also noticed more women in the marketplaces and a general sense of friendliness that was not there before - a sure sign to her that things in Iraq have definitely improved.
“It’s the little things that you kind of pay attention to,” she said.
It has also allowed her the freedom of practicing her passion of helping others in a number of different ways. One of those is acting as a facilitator with the Iraqi people who have been wounded and helping them receive a higher level of care so they can live normal lives.
“Right now we have a man in our sector who needs cataract surgery and doesn’t know where to go,” she said. “Basic things that might be a little bit easier for an American to figure out, takes a little bit more coordination here in Iraq.”
Brown is happy for the changes that she has seen; happy because much of the trauma that was so commonplace three years ago, and even a year ago, has given way to progress in so many areas of Iraq.
“Either way it’s still rewarding. I still feel like I am making a difference,” she said.
That is especially important as she works to be the positive role model for her daughter Elisa, who nominated her in May in Teleflora’s America’s Favorite Mom contest, which was broadcast the week before Mother’s Day on ABC’s Good Morning America.”
“The favorite mom thing was an honor,” Brown said.
While seeing that appreciation bestowed on her by her child makes her heart sing, it is the war itself that has humbled her the most.
“I am probably more grateful for a family,” she said. “Families that can stick together can get through anything.”
Brown will be coming home this month on leave and then will return in January to finish out her tour with the rest of the 4th Infantry Division, all of whom will return to Fort Hood by the start of the summer.
Brown is hopeful that her help in a medical capacity has taught those in the various Iraqi communities to step out on their own and learn to help themselves.
“Their health care system may not compare to ours, but there is a health care system here that is willing to work with them,” she said.
