Well, my chickadees, I have
returned from my week of FEMA training badly sleep-deprived and a bit traumatized,
with a new-found terror of biological warfare and a cholesterol level that I
can only guess is now through the roof thanks to the accursed deliciousness of Southern
cooking and a Southern refusal to allow you to experience even five seconds of
mild hunger. That having been said, it was the one of the most amazing experiences
of my life, and I am blessed to have had it. I was in the Healthcare Leadership
Program, which ran concurrently with the Emergency Response Team class. (Those
were the folks who ran the decontamination tents, among other things.) I didn’t
sign a non-disclosure agreement or anything, but it’s tactically understood
that I shouldn’t go into a lot of specifics on a public site. So I will keep
the details of the actual training exercises somewhat minimal, while still
attempting to be scintillating.
I would like to preface this by
saying that I am deeply grateful to the people in this country--the nurses, medics,
firefighters, police, military personnel and others who are braver and stronger
and smarter than I will ever be--who are working very hard behind the scenes
every day to make sure that lives will be saved and suffering will be minimized
in the event of a disaster. Over the last week, I have had the honor of being
surrounded by some of the most remarkable people I have ever met. I saw people
do extraordinary things and rise to the occasion in ways that they never
believed they could. I saw first-hand the enormity of what can be accomplished
when egos are in check and a group of people pull together to act as a team. I saw
human angels in action. I have always had faith in this country, but I have
returned with a renewed sense of optimism and a firm belief in our collective
potential.
For context, the training
started with a lot of lectures on the basics of the Emergency Incident Command System
and the numerous involved agencies and their roles, then it progressed slowly
into tabletop exercises followed by short, live scenarios during which we were
observed on camera throughout and fed information through “controllers” who
dictated fictional phone calls and acted as various characters in the scenarios.
As the scenarios advanced in length and complexity, live actors were brought
onto the scene, which made things even more interesting. It required a fair bit
of suspension of disbelief, but I’ve never had a problem with that.
As someone who has always thought
of myself as adverse to chaos, I discovered that I actually have a love for it.
After a brief stint in the fictional Public Health office, I felt that I wasn’t
seeing enough action, and I asked to be transferred to the fictional Emergency
Department. Public Health was an interesting assignment in some ways, but we
were isolated from the hospital in a windowless office, and much of the work
involved trying to track down the origin of various terrible disease outbreaks.
I got bored doing nothing but making phone calls, then two nine-year-old twins “died”
of Anthrax exposure, and it hurt me in the feels pretty bad. I fully realized
that the ED would be a hundred times worse in terms of human carnage, and I was
right, but I felt a deep need to be smack in the middle of it, to experience
the worst things possible, perhaps in a misguided bid to gain some sense of
mastery over my fear. So, midway through the training, the instructor brought
me to the ED as an “extra hand.” The ED team had already coalesced at that
point and they would have been well within their rights to take umbrage at
having a non-nurse interloper dropped into their midst, but they handled it
like pros with the can-do declaration, “No problem! We’ll put you to work.”
And put me to work they did. In
the final capstone event on Friday, in which every natural and man-made
disaster known to man hit seemingly within fifteen minutes of each other, I was
on my feet and running non-stop for the entire four hours, and getting a crash
course in triage at the same time. And I loved it. I felt alive and energized
and full of adrenaline and ready for anything. And anything came, including a
woman who I had to wheel up to the second floor as her baby was “crowning” and
her husband was yelling at me, a fight in the waiting room between a mother and
daughter, a rogue reporter who tried to pry information out of me, (I am proud
to say I didn’t crack), and the consummate trauma patient, a man who had very
realistically, graphically amputated legs from a combine accident. I will never
forget his screams. But more than that, I will never forget interacting with
his devastated brother, who collapsed in sobs and told me that his brother was
all he had in this world. That was the one that finally got me, folks. I took
care of him as well as I could, but that did me in. No one saw me, but I had to
go into the bathroom and cry after that. Damn FEMA actors. They were absolute
masters at knowing how to stress us out and get under our skin.
The other slightly less bad
moment was when I got mildly dressed down by a very formidable Eastern European
doctor-in-real-life for not knowing how to properly do a verbal report. I
consider it a victory that later in the day I was able to get her to crack a
slight smile by telling her I passed my nursing exam in the hour since I had
last seen her.
Overall, I feel that my
confidence around being an asset in a mass casualty event has gone from almost
zero to about 90%. I’m just a very ordinary citizen with a non-clinical job. I’m
not particularly strong physically and I certainly wouldn’t call myself
courageous, but I know that I can be of help now, and that was my sole goal
going into this. I can’t do the work of an emergency room nurse or a
firefighter or a hazmat specialist, but I can do something. I can contribute and be of assistance to my community,
and for that I am glad in the heart.
I will wrap up with a pitch for
the FEMA training: You don’t have to be anyone special to go, and FEMA pays for
all of your food, lodging, and airfare. If you can get your employer to approve
you to attend and you can pass a background check, you’re in. The instructors
are highly experienced, consummate professionals, and the operation is run with
military-like structure and efficiency. Alabama is a beautiful state, and the training
center is on lush, tree-lined, well-kept grounds. They offer a lot of
different classes, and they are all excellent. If you’re curious and want to
look into it, you can check out the offerings at this link.
They also have an abundance of
free online classes, so check those out, too.
I loved every second of my time
at FEMA, even the parts that I hated, but it’s good to be home. I missed Mr.
Typist almost as much as I missed having a dimmer switch in the bathroom. I had
a shared bathroom suite, and every time I opened the door to pee in the middle of
the night, an automatic light switched on that had the glare and intensity of
stadium floodlights. It was very stressful and not conducive to getting back to
sleep easily, as my retinas burned for minutes afterward. Home is good. Our class video should be coming
out soon, but in the meantime, here is a video on the joys of home:
--Kristen McHenry
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