The Pilot News - Local doctor headed to Iraq

A member of the U.S. Army Reserves, Schlorke has risen to the rank of major, and has served two times before, once in Afghanistan in 2003 and once at Fort Hood, Texas in 2006. Each time, his stay was roughly three months, not counting preparation time.
“For physicians we try to do a 90-day ‘boots on ground rotation,’” he said, “which means that once I arrive where I’m supposed to be working and I start doing the job that I’m supposed to be doing, then there’s a 90-day countdown, then I get to leave the country at that point.”
When the 90-day period ends, Schlorke will not be able to return home right away, as there is necessary paperwork to be filled out while he transitions back from active duty to reserves.
“My first rotation I was gone six and a half month,” he said.
However, he said, the 90-day period is actually a pro to being a doctor in the Army Reserves, rather than a con, as it does not keep him away for too long.
“For physicians, we understand that to be gone a whole year from your practice, it would be tough to come back to any kind of a practice,” he said.
However, a con is that he gets called away more frequently.
In the past, Schlorke was active duty, enlisted as an O.R. tech. At the time, he was carefully weighing his career options.
“At the time I joined I’d always thought about being a doctor but I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I’d done a couple of different majors at that point in my college career ... I wanted to make sure that was what I really wanted to do rather than something I thought I wanted to do.”
He had just married, and both he and his wife were full-time students and working part-time.
His enlistment lasted eight years, four and a half of which were active-duty during the first Persian-Gulf War. After that, he finished his enlistment in the reserves, then went back to medical school.
However, one day a recruiter came by and explained the various programs available for doctors in the Army.
“I didn’t intend to make a career out of this ... I knew I could handle the military after being enlisted for so long, and so I just thought it was the right thing for me to go back in. Obviously since Sept. 11 my military career has been busier than I thought it would be.”
Schlorke discussed his coming deployment calmly.
“I’m not really nervous although I just want to get things going,” he said. “I don’t really look forward to it or dread or regret going. For me its just, ‘this is what I signed up to do, this is what they’re asking me to do now,’ so I just want to go and get it done.”
His family and his patients may be a little more reluctant to see him go, though he said they are getting used to it.
“I think I’ve been in the military long enough that they’re OK,” he said. “So I think they’re proud of me, and also wish I didn’t have to go.”
His patients have ex-pressed similar feelings on his impending absence.
“I’ve heard from the vast majority of my patients, they would rather I not go, are proud that I am going; they keep me in their prayers and they’re looking forward to me coming back.”
Schlorke said that a doctor’s absence can be hard on patients who are used to seeing the same face each time they go in.
“To be honest I probably do lose some folks,” he said, “and I do not fault or blame them for that. I think it is hard when you see a doctor that has to be gone for a while and then while they’re gone you see someone else, so if you’re more comfortable seeing that new person who probably is not going to be leaving the practice off and on like I will be, that’s fine with me. I want you to receive the best medical care.”
Schlorke predicts that this will not be his last deployment. While many may praise him for choosing to use his medical skills to care for soldiers, he feels he is just fulfilling a duty.
“To me I just don’t look at this as that big of a deal,” he said. “I’m doing what I said I would do for them, and for me it’s a way I can contribute. It’s an important contribution. We have 18, 19, 20 year olds who are wiling to die for their country, then I just think it’s kind of the least I can do to help take care of them when they’re overseas.”