The toughest part of being an active reservist during wartime is not knowing when or where you may be deployed. “They can call you up and say, 'we need you here,'” said Dr. Liu, who is married and has four children aged 1–18 years. “As a family, we've held off on making any type of major purchases right now. We don't want to buy a new house or anything like that because if I get redeployed, financially, we could certainly take a hit.”
Balancing his military and civilian obligations is “like anything else,” he added. “You have to multitask the best you can. I was very lucky in the sense that, when I was deployed, I had full support from my colleagues in the department of neurosurgery here. That was very helpful.”
Dr. Liu said that that when he returns home from military service he feels “regrounded.” We Americans “live in a very materialistic society,” he explained. “I usually come back with a sense that certain things just aren't that important. In the current Iraq war, a lot of young soldiers are hurt, and hurt badly. It regrounds you [to the fact] that the most important things in life are your family and your career.”