04 166 Days: My Journey Through the Darkness

“If killed in the field, who would you like to escort your body home? What type of ceremony do you request at your funeral? What would you like to be done with your remains? Do you have any wishes for your personal belongs?”

166 Days: My Journey Through the Darkness 

A memoir of Jennifer Clark, a former United States Air Force officer and Physician Assistant, deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 and her struggles with PTSD.

Afghanistan, War Zone, Combat, and Insurgents. All this intimidating words that Jennifer Clark never imagined would pertain to her, yet would soon become her reality.

In 2008 she was faced with a deployment into the trenches of the most violent regions of Afghanistan as an augmentee to a US Army team of Green Berets. Her duty was to lead a Female Treatment Team, which was comprised of a female provider and a female medic, tasked to provide medical care to the underserved women and children in Afghanistan. She would run the clinic located on a firebase that was once a Taliban stronghold taken over by Coalition Forces in 2002. She was a young officer; newly commissioned after serving five years as an enlisted medic, with just less than one year of experience as a Physician Assistant.

The child lying in blood-soaked clothes as his father screamed frantically in Pashtu beside him . . . the man who traveled for five days by camel after his arm was blown up in an explosion . . . the beautiful little girl covered in blood with shrapnel wounds to her entire abdomen, face and arms. These were a few of the hundreds of patients with unimaginable ailments Jennifer Clark treated during her deployment to Afghanistan, a country where, she discovered, “children never had a childhood, women lived in constant fear and men knew nothing but a life of fighting”

It is a true story of hope that leaves the reader inspired to reach within and find strength to overcome any adversity.