Bullets 2 Bedpans
EP:13 Gritty Reality of War: Steve Nisbet U.S. Special Warfare
U.S. Special Warfare Airmen Pararescueman Veteran, Steven Nisbet joins B2B to talk about navigating his way through intense training, multiple combat deployments, and the challenges of transitioning to civilian life. Steve provides an unfiltered glimpse into the gritty realities of serving in a war zone and the often-overlooked mental toll it takes on our military personnel.
Today Steve has found a renewed sense of purpose and is now committed to helping fellow veterans and first responders through his nonprofit organization Shields and Stripes. This episode promises to be an eye-opening exploration of military life, the challenges of transitioning to civilian life, and the strength found in resilience and community support.
Nurses and Medics: This is your platform! We want to hear your stories of the good, the bad and the ugly. Send us an email at cominghomewell@gmail.com
Do you know a health worker that needs a laugh?
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Get the ammo you need to seize your day at Soldier Girl Coffee Use Code CHW10 for a 10% off at checkout!
Special Thanks to
Artwork: Joe Weber @joeweber_tattoos
Intro/Outro/Disclaimer Credits:
Pam Barragan Host of 2200TAPS Podcast
"Racer" by Infraction https://bit.ly/41HlWTk
Music promoted by Inaudio: ...
U.S. Special Warfare Airmen Pararescueman Veteran, Steven Nisbet joins B2B to talk about navigating his way through intense training, multiple combat deployments, and the challenges of transitioning to civilian life. Steve provides an unfiltered glimpse into the gritty realities of serving in a war zone and the often-overlooked mental toll it takes on our military personnel.
Today Steve has found a renewed sense of purpose and is now committed to helping fellow veterans and first responders through his nonprofit organization Shields and Stripes. This episode promises to be an eye-opening exploration of military life, the challenges of transitioning to civilian life, and the strength found in resilience and community support.
Nurses and Medics: This is your platform! We want to hear your stories of the good, the bad and the ugly. Send us an email at cominghomewell@gmail.com
Do you know a health worker that needs a laugh?
B2B N.F.L.T.G. Certificate click here
Get the ammo you need to seize your day at Soldier Girl Coffee Use Code CHW10 for a 10% off at checkout!
Special Thanks to
Artwork: Joe Weber @joeweber_tattoos
Intro/Outro/Disclaimer Credits:
Pam Barragan Host of 2200TAPS Podcast
"Racer" by Infraction https://bit.ly/41HlWTk
Music promoted by Inaudio: ...
All right, well, let's get this rodeo going. Let's start where you started from, like where you were before you went into the military and kind of what led to there, because it all involves psyche and perspective and drive and all that good stuff. So you know, we don't just do it as the good idea, fairy. There's something that drove us that direction.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, no, I'm happy to start there. I think that's very suitable. I grew up in Tucson, arizona. I was born in Colorado and spent my childhood playing soccer because that's what I wanted to do when I was getting older. And then, as I went into high school and middle school and started looking at college, there wasn't like any scouts looking for what For our particular high school, I was not like you're a very prestigious high school, no one, no scout, you're coming to check us out. So the riding was essentially in the walls of Troy.
Speaker 3:I'd better figure out academically what I want to do before I enter into college. So all my friends going from high school to college, they're all intelligent folks, they're going in for engineering degrees, they have big plans to work at Reathion and IBM. I was not that way, but those were my friends and I didn't know anything different and I just wanted to hang out with them still. So I couldn't afford to go to university and get scholarships that they got. So they all went to the U of A or NADU, all those different universities, and we were a middle class, low income family. And so I went to community college in Tucson, human community college, and I went there and I was very into space stuff. So I wanted to be an astronomer.
Speaker 3:And as I went to college for the first year after graduating high school, I looked around with the people that were around me and I was like space is interesting, but there is a lot more I can be doing. But there's a lot of older folks around me and they are not fun. This is not what I anticipated as an 18, 19 year old kid and I was like there's certainly got to be something else out there. And my dad has spent several years in the Air Force, my grandfathers spent years in the Air Force. So I was like I'm going to go down that route. I'm going to let me just investigate and explore that pathway.
Speaker 3:As I went to an Air Force recruiter, tech Yasab performed really well on that and they're like hey, you can pretty much do anything you want. And I looked through all these lists of jobs and I was like you know what? Maybe this is my pathway to go and link up with my buddies, my pals from the past. And so I chose to be a nuclear weapons apprentice and I was like that's a way, a pathway to reach the IBM, to get a decent job working with weapons systems and catch up with my buddies. So go back to Tucson and work there. And I spent four years in this particular job. Get schooling paid for.
Speaker 3:It was, that, was it. That's what was going on in my head. So I walked out of the training office and next door that's like a recruiter suite, and so there was an army recruiter next door. People's feet was standing outside and he said, hey, hey, son, you want to be in special forces. And I was like not really, but like I never thought of it. But give me your picture. What does it sell it to me? And he brought me in and told me everything about it and he's like, yeah, sign up for this, get this amount of money, do these things. Well, like that sounds really cool, but I don't want to be in the army and it's so awesome.
Speaker 2:He's like I'm going for the higher intelligent military service please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just my parents and my. My grandfather was like hey, life's better in the air. Living conditions are always going to be better, so it's just always.
Speaker 2:when I was told that is a true, that is a true statement. And I will tell you why. My buddies that were army nurses because I'm a nurse by trade but my buddies that were army nurses said to me yeah, so you're like condemned housing is like our officer housing, so you made a wise choice. To you, yeah, it's true, and even deployed later in life.
Speaker 3:I just got to see that and so I walked into the Air Force with Rutgers and I was like, hey, I don't want to sign up for this particular job. Do you have a special operations career field? Like I didn't notice that, and he said, yeah, but you wouldn't make it. And I was like, yeah, well, that's really nice.
Speaker 4:Well, thanks for the confidence booster.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so he's like nine out of 10 dudes don't make it. You know it's a big, most people quit. It's just stick with what you got. And I was like, can you just give me the information and put what I just signed on hold? Don't, we're not going to do that. Let me review this. But it looked up when I all did everything about it. I was a little disk special operations, yes, and I had two jobs in there pet rescue and comic control and I didn't want to do anything with medicine. I was like I don't touch, I don't feel like saying like dealing with that, I more just want to do commandos stuff.
Speaker 4:Just want to wear the shorts, man Silky.
Speaker 3:So I looked at the comic control stuff and I was like I don't know about, like what that even means, or like talking on radios, but what I don't want to do is mess with medicine. So I started training on the control and as I got into the delayed enlistment program and went to take that physical ability stamina test the past test to get into these special operations in the Air Force, they said hey, which one are you taking? And I said what do you mean? And they're like well, you know which, which version of the test are you going to take? I said I, I, what's the difference of the two? And they said, well, once got swimming in the beginning, what's going to swimming after the run? And I said, well, I've always done run and then swim. And they're like all right, cool, you're going to be a PJ.
Speaker 2:Is that the one with medicine? Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'd like to retract my last statement, so for any.
Speaker 2:So, okay, let me, let me stop you there, because that's hilarious. So for our audience here and I know that there's also civilian medical people and probably just millions listening Let me just do a couple of things. One I need to say that the military doesn't really care what you want. They're just going to take you and do what they want with you. I ended up in a similar situation on where I ended up in nursing irrelevant to this right now. But I get to number two.
Speaker 2:I'm sure a lot of you guys are wondering like, who the hell are we talking to? We're just yapping away here and you know this podcast is geared towards military medicine and, if you'd noticed over time, it's been really hard to nail down people in the military or veterans that were in the military and medicine, because they're all running around doing stuff and so it's really hard to nail them down. But we grabbed one and we finally nailed them to a chair and we're like come talk to us. He said, okay, I will.
Speaker 2:And so who we have with us is Stevenus, but he's 16 year, air Force Special Warfare as a para-rescumen, which is what he was just talking about. He's had 10 combat deployments, and then he was medically retired and he had diagnosis of PTSD that led to his retirement, which we're going to talk about. And now, at the end of all this, we're going to talk about where all this has led him in the civilian world. So see, we did a little backwards. We were chatting with you first, but we want to welcome you on officially. I love it.
Speaker 3:No, thank you for having me. Little Quentin Tarantino, I like it.
Speaker 2:We stylish like that. So yeah, so go back to you ended up, okay, so go back to where I kind of cut you off there, where I you ended up in the para-rescue side of life.
Speaker 3:Yes, we said, all right, you're going to be PJ. And I was like, well, I thought I was going to sign up for control, combat control. And he said, well, they're the same thing, they go to the same training. When you get there, I was like, okay, this guy wouldn't lie to me.
Speaker 2:I'm like cracking up so hard. How many times Got him?
Speaker 3:So I showed up to INDoc and looked around it was there were no other. Combat control was separate in PJ's training which before it used to be together. They used to do the indoctrination course together but then they separated and the combat control schoolhouse went and did their own orientation. We stuck, pj stuck with the indoctrination course. So as I entered into the pipeline I started to discover kind of what it really was paramedicine, and I was sure I was. Now I'm all both feet in, so to speak, and just started pushing and stretching through it. I started my INDoc course about 120 people and of those only 12 of us finished.
Speaker 2:How long is INDoc, because this is a long process. The INDoc is how long.
Speaker 3:So INDoc at that point was 12 weeks long. It's since changed to what's called assessment selection and then they've taken really all. They brought everything back together again and now, now, when the individual sign up, they could sign up and then they could. It is the same thing. They could become controllers and they could become PJs. It's really the demand of the career. Career, you know, set the time and how well they perform. And so that what that guy said to me, you know, back in 2004, 2005, is not a lie. Now you know, you get signed up in the same place and then take, you want to be a PJ and you could be a controller, but, and that's that's what's happening now. But that was 12 weeks for my particular, that's just the INDoc, like the gamekeeper school.
Speaker 2:And that's all the physical stuff, right? I mean, you're not even doing medicine, you're just trying to, like, physically, get through the challenges.
Speaker 4:What year was this?
Speaker 3:This was 2005.
Speaker 4:Okay, so gosh right. Okay, just trying to get my timeline together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And so 12 weeks in the INDoc course, which is all. It's really a pre-scuba prep. So you're doing a lot of underwater stuff. We're doing a lot of water confidence trainings, what they call it.
Speaker 2:Water confidence training yeah.
Speaker 3:Funny breathing with a snorkel holding your breath quite a bit Drown proofing.
Speaker 3:Drown proofing, yeah. So all that stuff that's underwater, all that, all that water stuff that really set the free people out. So that's that first portion. Traditionally, you're supposed to go from there directly to diet school because you're going to be at your most prepared state. Well, there is a big backup for that time period for special courses, diet school and marine core diet school, which that's who we were sending our guys through, so PJs, like airports didn't have a diet school back then, so most of us ended up waiting. So in that time period of waiting we go to the airport and we go free fall, you go to Sierra school underwater, you can rest. So I did all of those in a year time span and then my diet school opened up and meanwhile, as I was from that pre-dive, the end of portion.
Speaker 3:Now you're going to diet school at those same standards that you finished at a year ago and we know like going to airborne, going to free fall, going to all these different schools in three a year you're going to lose a lot of what you gained at least, especially in the water. So the first classes of Air Force Diet School they were trying to set precedent. So, hey, this is almost like another selection. So it was a kick. It was just as hard, if not harder, doing that than in doc because it was just a smoke session after smoke chest and all underwater stuff. Look, a little bit of diving sprinkled in there.
Speaker 3:It's changed, but they made a point to say, hey, this is Air Force Diet School because it was on the same campus as the Navy Diet School. So once you complete that, then you go to EMT, basic, EMT, paramedic, and then your final culmination school, which is technically called the Apprentice Sports or PJ University. That's where you tie it all together and then finally get your beret, which for me I didn't fail anything, I didn't kick back anything, I didn't do recyclable on two and a half years.
Speaker 2:Two and a half years. Yeah, I was just going to say that in doc itself, that first. So my husband actually, when he came in the military he did that. He actually was a K-minus per rescue and back then he is a little before your time by probably 10 years and I don't know if it was the same at your time or not, steve, but if they got injured I know that they recycle now. Right, they'll get them healed up. I mean, they put a lot of money into you guys. You're like literally a million dollar men and women. So it was a fall blew his knee out and they did the whole. I don't know if they still I mean, this is what he is telling me they turn their backs. You got to ring the bell. They turn their backs and you're done. I mean it's very not nice, it sucks.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, in doc was very much like. Usually. People are quitting up either on the pull deck or in the mornings, before the day starts. In the morning, like most people.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, he was a year in. He was almost done. This is like this was his, like I don't remember exactly, he fell, something happened, but the way he landed it blew his knee out Like he couldn't continue on, and then, well, let me tell you that that really sat with him for a long time. That was, yeah, not good. So so I, I, two and a half years, I mean you really are worth a million dollar more after they've done all this training on the day, especially now, now they've invested they've invested a lot into the performance, human performance aspect. Yes.
Speaker 3:Trained and they have dietitians, they have physical therapists, they have mesothmosauses they have floats, tanks, sprout chambers they've got the worst just building these combat athletes, so to speak, that are ready and built to go into combat. And so you see these. I still teach newer BJs that come out of the pipeline in type rescue and I, just with a group last week, I mean you didn't have these giants coming out of their of the pipeline that are very well trained as far as physically human performance wise. They, you know, they can move just about anything. They eat well. So it's, it's pretty wild to see the amount of time and effort put into these folks.
Speaker 2:What's happening mentally when this is happening? I mean, they're the whole thing is break you down and build you up. But I mean and we all go through that on some level, but special forces is its own own level.
Speaker 4:I think, too, seeing teammates like you were explaining earlier have to ring the bell and I'd heard something about that in the past too it's almost like you're a quitter and there's a lot of negative feelings attached to that. So you're seeing that happen. You're physically feeling it, mentally feeling it.
Speaker 2:Like what? What is it from your perspective that's going on in your head?
Speaker 3:Yes, you go through that whole entire process is it was a lot of discipline and focus on my goal. Like I, I never got focused or too attached to anyone person to get that and I were new. If they were going to get set back, if they were going to be, you know, quit or whatever. There was a couple of us that were really close but we had the same mindset of, I would say, quitting never cost. Cross my mind. There's never a thought of I'm going to quit. It was always. This sucks, or iteration is going to suck it Every step of the way. It would.
Speaker 3:You would either break it down into seconds or segments or breaks. You know whether it's lunch like well, lunch is coming up, so we just got to survive till lunch, and then our dinner's coming up, or breakfast Like, or it gets a really strong area of stress, let's say underwater. I'm going to get another breath At some point. I'm going to come up and I'm going to get up. That, whether I'm unconscious or conscious, that's a different story. I'm going to be. I'm going to get air.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get oxygen. I will not die.
Speaker 4:There's a diffivulability right over there. Good yeah.
Speaker 3:And the other stuff said is you just look at the. I looked at the instructors as human beings. They all have families. They go home at night, they go to sleep, they have a schedule, they're going to go eat. Like this is going to end at some point. I'm always thinking that at some point, even future, you know deployments and things like that Like at some point I'm going to be in my bed too, like I'm going to be eating a chum or whatever we're eating. So that's what I'm always thinking about If I approach it. It's difficult or challenge mentally.
Speaker 3:That's thinking about.
Speaker 2:okay, at some point so the medical part, right. So when we listen to this, it is a majority. Physical, right, I mean, you are, there's a lot of you have to get physically. And then mental. The mental is probably more important than any part of this, Because if you don't have that mental flexibility and resiliency, you're, you're a goner, Like you're not going to make it right. So you had the right mindset of these little baby steps, but then we get into the medical part and I kind of chuckle because I'm like you didn't, you're like I don't want medicine. And here we are. They're rescuing.
Speaker 4:They end up being along the lines of like paramedics, right, If not greater.
Speaker 2:What's your equivalency after you're done training?
Speaker 3:The SC take the natural registry to become a paramedic and then you go beyond that to become. They have a lot of different qualifications and certifications you get.
Speaker 3:So I think a stackable practitioner is one no-transcript. You would go to these four advanced schools to then get, like you know, like a field surgery type of stuff. So whether we do a surgical crike, so kind of holding somebody's neck, putting a tube in there Used to be super tabby back in the day or even a chest tube putting a chest tube in or finger for ergonomics, so kind of holds and chests to drain out tubes. And now guys are getting depending on the unit. Guys are getting issued ultrasounds to put in main main lines, cat lines for the, for the moral aligned goes down to the formal otteries to block that off in case we have a high junctional bleed and we can't access it. So we can do something putting a wire down to get a balloon and then flake that, and these gave us some time to explore and then solve the problems at that.
Speaker 3:And you don't have a lot of time and it's a very advanced procedure that's watched and you have to go through a lot of training. But that's something we do overseas with our, our surgery. Surgery you get. You get a lot, but legally like if I was to translate it to the States I am legally a nationally registered parent.
Speaker 4:Yeah, which even for a guy who says he didn't want to do medicine, paramedic school is very intense. I mean we've got friends and have had coworkers that have gone through that program and it's it's pretty arduous yeah.
Speaker 3:So for us it was condensed down into like a three and a half four month period, holy crap. And so you have pretty much a block. There's like 13 or 14 blocks that we were having to do. You're pretty much a block week. You know, you have cardiology, pharmacology, all these different sections of paramedic system that you're just being everything's being shoved down and you're just going like a fire hose and you're taking in as much information as you can, and then you pass that block and then do it again and then just do it like dump that and then go to the next dump that, go to the next and see that I wouldn't say you come out of there like a really good paramedic there, as a good student.
Speaker 3:Yeah, then once, once you complete the national registry, the national registry, then you get to your teams and you do clinical rotations and things like that. That's when you start to really learn medicine and then on your appointments you start to learn what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 2:That's where rubber meets the road on the deployment. But when you're doing your training, like in clinicals, are they putting you're? They're putting you, I'm assuming, in trauma center type things. I mean, you're not in a family practice clinic, I'm assuming.
Speaker 3:Right. So you get to a, a big hospital and you'll have different rotations for different sections. So you get like two hours in labor delivery, you get several hours in the ER, you'll get some some time in the OR working dropping tubes and just spend time in anesthesiologist and put tubes in.
Speaker 2:Okay, how many? How many babies did you deliver?
Speaker 3:That's a point. So on my first day it was a C-section and so I so I labor, delivered my first day of clinicals and my last day of clinicals Nice. So you're supposed to deliver a minimum of two.
Speaker 4:That's the standard Bookend babies. How was that Bookend babies? One in the start, one at the end.
Speaker 3:So I I helped with the C-section on the first day and then the last day of the. I was just at the deliver one and ended up helping to deliver 12 more.
Speaker 4:Oh, holy smokes, I've had those days.
Speaker 3:After seven or eight, I had called up my pre-section and was like hey, I've already delivered a big seven babies today. Can I, can I leave? Can I be? It should be done. And they were like well, you go to the ER. I was like I don't want to go to the ER.
Speaker 2:I'll just stay here. I'm already in a rhythm, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:I'll just hang out here and they're gonna deliver five more, holy crap. I'm not there by myself, but I'm I'm intimately involved with process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how beneficial was that in your future deployments?
Speaker 3:Deployments none. I'm so personally very yeah, you know, I just recently had another baby. Oh, congrats. Not me and my wife, but there was a time period and on the driving to the hospital, or even just in our house, it was like, well, I might have to go to the hospital.
Speaker 2:You're like I got it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so being able to go in by ambulance. I got kicked out of the ambulance and then met her there and within 10 minutes of her arriving five minutes of me arriving she delivered.
Speaker 2:I call those stop, drop and plops. I love them because then there was very little paperwork. If I breathe in, we're doing good, oh, that is awesome. All right so. So you have done all right. So you've gone through all this training and it's extensive. I mean we've been talking about for a while and I really want the audience to understand what our paramedics or paramescumen are doing and the level of training that they get. It's high, you know. And so when you're done that, because you're you have to handle anything that comes at you. When you step into deployment, anything goes, because your name and deployment, like every other PJ's name and deployment, stock right, you're it, you're the man. So how long was it after your training got done that you went into the first of your 10 combat deployments?
Speaker 3:It was actually yeah, it was actually two years, and so it was very frustrating because all my buddies were deploying and they're doing great things and if your eye was like feel like a Ferrari that's never been ridden. So when you finish, like you know, with anything, you finish, we finish the dock and you feel like you feel like there's a moment where you've there's like an anti-climactic, that you've finished something and you want it to feel a certain way and it doesn't like well, there's, I have this other mountain climb. And then you go and get your parade and it's become a full-fledged PJ and then you show up to your first unit and I was like, well, I was anti-climactic, like I have this whole other mountain climb, like deploying and actually doing the job. And then when you do that, then you have to get the levels of being a team leader and then running team, becoming a jump master. So all these different things were it was never. It was like the itch was never being scratched, so to speak. So it was two years before I had the plow and actually done the job.
Speaker 3:Up until then it was all training, you know, preparing for whatever potential threat was coming up, you know, nationally or globally strategically type of thing. I was stationed in Okinawa, japan, with a special tactics squadron. Out there, the Column was, first of all was 2010 and it was with a Julie Task Force. So I was out in Eastern Afghanistan and the third Navy in there was a pretty big base attack and that was the first time I got shot at and figured out like no, that's what some might want to buy you. And then from then on it was kind of deployments and essentially what I call the Black Clotted Team, of things just occurring throughout my career. Just you know whether it's me being in the right place at the right time or, you know, just blacked out of bad things going on around me.
Speaker 2:And that's what we call experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I got my fair share of it. I then scratched all the itches.
Speaker 2:And then some you're just like okay, that's great, the wound's bleeding now.
Speaker 3:That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:How go ahead?
Speaker 3:No, that's, don't worry.
Speaker 2:So how many deployments? I'm going to kind of move you through these deployments. You were deployed during what operations?
Speaker 3:Several. So obviously in during freedom Iraqi freedom and then individually, when I need to my joint task force, when I need to our art team unit. Those are very individual operations that were very they weren't theater campaigns, they were like hey, this is a particular operation that is specific for this particular force, right? So more of a, I guess, a classified type of operation to do those particular deployments. And then you have inherent result, which is another came right Yep.
Speaker 3:So spread throughout all the theaters. So Afghanistan, iraq, syria, yemen, east Africa, even Lebanon. So we have a taste of just about every terrorist organization on the planet and you have got a fair share of pretty much each, every every AO that you could possibly get involved with With some secret squirrel stuff sprinkled in between.
Speaker 2:What a nondisclosure stuff going on there that you'll never know. Well, I, you know, I'm gonna. They're the you know. When we say that we're like, ooh, you signed an NDA and it's all secret squirrel, the downside of that and, steve, you probably will relate to this is that you, when you sign the nondisclosure, then what other things that occur are things like your records get data masked, right, they can't, nobody can see it because it's all secret squirrel, depending on, obviously, the nondisclosure, disclosure, whatnot, and the classification. But it's all secret squirrel stuff. And the reason why I'm kind of bringing this up is because I would take care of a lot of special forces guys and what I would see happen is that they couldn't, especially when they were leaving the military, they couldn't get the care they needed, they couldn't get the VA to support it, whatever, like. Oh well, it's data mask. We have no proof and that was a. That's a huge issue.
Speaker 4:Yeah, how are you supposed to process any kind of trauma or, you know, whatever it is you're dealing with, when you've got those cards stacked against you with the data masking and you can't, you know, go into detail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you talk to a therapist?
Speaker 4:Do you just hypothetical the crap out of it, like, hypothetically, not that this ever happened, but how do you, how do you get around that?
Speaker 3:So the nice thing about is why you're in while you're there right You're at this special mission unit is they have embedded psychologists and it's therapists that are there that understand the mission. They've got all the credentialing that you can possibly need versus your requirements, so that's no problem. It's that like when you describe the transition out and when we do our short notice mission or you know, you get a phone call within an hour you're on an airplane out somewhere else. It's not like somebody is generating these orders for you and like here you go, like here's where you're going to go, here's what you're going to do, and you don't have like a deployment line that you're going through. You're getting your stuff in an ICU this is what I need, and don't know how long it'll be gone. Get on an airplane, that stuff gets loaded and then you fly, you start mission planning in route. We have like a blanket set of orders and so it's just a general statement saying this person, from these dates to these dates, is on this alert cycle. Now it's when you're transitioning out and you go to do your VA appointments and your VA starts contracting out other hospitals and organizations and clinics and they have no clue the general, the DOD or the military general, but even more so a special mission you get, let alone a special special operation itself.
Speaker 3:So when you describe some of the things that you know, hey, I've got a TVI from doing snow and ice movement or skiing, that's how we get around in snow. And I fell in with unconscious and the response from the clinician was well, you don't ski skis. Skis for fun, it's not for the military, so we're not going to count that. And I was like, excuse me, like how do you expect us to get around in this snow just because we're fighting a war in what you see in the desert, like there's snow in a lot of places that we have conflicts. So you have to make friends, I guess, like build relationships, help them understand. That was the challenge. You're treated from me, particularly for folks like me, the special mission unit is you're treated as you have a standard of care and you're used to somebody like taking care of everything for you.
Speaker 3:I started transitioning out. It was, hey, the transition assistance program over there. You got to go to the base finance. You got to go to the base like all these different people. No, they don't have any of your medical records. We don't have any of your stuff. It shows you haven't deployed since 2013 with your other unit. So you have to go through fixing your DD214,. You got to go through all the things that a traditional person in the military would have done for them already. It's already in the system and we just work on a different system. Likewise with promotions.
Speaker 3:We're challenged for us because at that unit everything you do is a data mass operation. It's a special mission, it's a special assignment, so you can't retro-enlist performance, report the way that other people look and so like I can't describe this particular operation with who I was supporting, how many people I treated, like the location I was at, for how long. I can't describe any of that. It was a pretty valorous thing. Then that sets me back up to Hager too, against these other folks who didn't have a deployment but they had an opportunity to go to school, so they got themselves a degree, they went and volunteered at different places, they trained up some newer guys on teams. They weren't able to progress themselves in their career. So you have these guys who physically in the job didn't make themselves better because they didn't execute the job, but they got the promotion versus folks like myself, who were doing the job for eight months, potentially deployed, maybe next year.
Speaker 4:So they've got the tangible bullets, the things that could be talked about, to write on the EPR, and what I'm hearing you too say is there's challenges even before leaving services. You're kind of doing this uphill battle with promotions, with EPRs, and it's great that you had embedded psychologists there to treat the mental health side. But it brought to my head the question of what about when you're out, when that uniform comes off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hold that thought right there because I'm going to back you up just a little bit and bring you back to that Garden.
Speaker 2:Was it in deployment time that you realize, not deployment, but in your military career, when you're like, okay, this isn't working anymore? And MZ and I actually were talking about this just before you came on that we used to take care of lots of garden reserve people in our previous job and when we were in the military and I took care of a lot of special forces guys and a comment I made was when I got a special forces guy, I pretty much can guarantee you they're going to be medically boarded. And the reason for that was because they were trying to get it done for so long that by the time they reach me they're broke, broke. They're broke is a joke. I mean, they've really given absolutely everything they can and now they can't. So where was it in your continuum that things started changing for you? And I'm not asking you to get in any detail you're not comfortable with, but just where along that where you're like, yeah, this not so good anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and I did a lot of things. Second deployment was with the rescue squadron. It was a joint task force. I was doing what overseas typically you would. You would refer to as a Casabac mission, flying in Coliseum Pedro in a in a 60, when we don't pick up you know anywhere from. You know somebody fell off a Haskell barrier or like, got us, got like a scorpion sting to match penalties. You know eight, nine or unknown amount of patients. So it was. It was ups and downs and we're flying six to seven mission today on a halo.
Speaker 3:You were on a 60, you said on a halo yeah, so for four months great, not going to be a long every single day, you knew, I had it sunrise and we were on working 12 hour shifts. So you know my shift would be between like two in the morning to two pm in the afternoon, and always like right at sunrise. I knew things. That's when they call us we're gonna start coming in, and so we would train, we'd show up, maybe watch some game of thrones in the morning, go go do a training session as far as working out, and then rope work or extrication, whatever it is, and then, as soon as the sun starts rising like 30 minutes before, it's when I make the guys like, hey, where's your sitting? Wait and wait for this mission, because it's going to be not stop after that.
Speaker 3:So, as I get used to that routine you know, turning turning the adrenaline up, turning it down, turning up, up and down, up and down came back home and then the boy to get almost within three months after getting home and that was a lot, by my choice, really, because I had a new group of guys that were coming and they needed somebody to deploy I just got back and I was like, yeah, I'm going to go.
Speaker 3:Um, so after some of those, after those deployments were closing down for rescue, that's when I went over to the special nation, because it was a whole other selection process, a whole nother training course that was. You know, 15 of us started, six of us were picked up and then it was a year of training just to get to that level, that tier level, and it deployed several times over that and it was the symptoms I started to notice after, you know, seven years of doing that. It was memory loss, like I couldn't remember some of the folks that I had known for a decade couldn't remember, like the name of somebody that was talking to me, how long it was talking to me?
Speaker 3:um, or I recognized somebody at Walmart and I didn't want to say hello because I don't remember his name. Um, and then just a lot of like space being spacey. Um, I would you know it's not like I'm thinking about anything, really. I'm staring at you know. It's either empty space or pushing my daughter on a swing or just wherever play at the playground. I'm just sitting and I'm staring at nothing. I have nothing going on my brain, it's just turned off.
Speaker 3:Um, and then the irritability. So I get very irritated really quickly. It was for me coming back from a deployment. Typically I want for two weeks to not go anywhere. Or I get to a dinner. I don't want to go out to a restaurant because I'm going to come across some ungrateful people that don't appreciate what they have and they don't float out. So I really want to just sit, sit at home and kind of be a catch 22, so to speak, because I'm not used to the kids either and my kids being so young at that time and they would get loud and they would whine and fight and I didn't know how to deal with that. It was a rather good shot at that.
Speaker 2:They did with the kids who? Who was noticing the symptoms first, you or your? Wife, my wife and I say that with intention because we know that that's typically. I would get a lot of those phone calls. My wife said my husband said my partner said yeah before they recognized it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and she was really good about using the into an argument, right. So, like you know, being too hard on the kids this time. My dad had spent 30 years in law enforcement and I worked in gangs and I was emulating what he like, how each was with us as kids and it's not that he was bad or anything like that, but it was. It was aggressive, it was stirred and it was loud when it needed to be, and so that's why I emulated that. That was what came really easy to me to get the reaction that I wanted, which is them to stop screaming, to stop fighting and then just to be quiet. So as that, you know, and and every time I did intervals is essentially intimidating them, every time I got the reaction I wanted, I was looking for a pellet piece of garbage. I go sit down and it's wrong with you, and one day they in my sitting there thinking about that particular other having that particular emotion, my wife that sat down and she pretty much capitalized on that moment said like hey, I want to make you upset and I love you, but you're scaring the kids and they're getting in the car like my kids, they're scared at you. That hit me really hard. And so I was like, okay, well, you're right, like I should not be doing that, I should not be eating loud. I'm supposed to be the one that's protecting them, not making them afraid. And so that's when I started emailing the psychologists. Okay, what, what do people even come and talk to you about? I don't even know the first step. I don't know what to tell you. I don't, like I all I know is PTSD from the, from the movies, right, and that's not me. Like I don't wake up in the middle of the night, like having some sort of meltdown or, like you know, spatial awareness, like I wake up fine, like I feel like I'm normal.
Speaker 3:And so I sat with the psychologist. She procured to the product as as resistant as I was, and one of the biggest things was my memory loss, which was concerning to me because I had a lot of TDIs or micro TDIs to go with it, and so I was like I want to get an MRI when I want cognitive testing, sort of an MRI. And they're like, yeah, your brain, like physically, is fine, like there's maybe a little bit of scarring to your nervous, for the most part. Finally, compared to what we've seen and in the cognitive testing life you like, perform really well. You're superior above all these other people, except for one area and that's a tenetness like you can't. You cannot maintain tension to anything longer than like a minute or two and you get horrible there, which is a strong strongly and they can deliver PTSD and so sort. And we got to explore that and I was like I don't feel like it happened okay.
Speaker 3:So I went back to the psychologist and started just being open and as I started describing or answering some of the questions, for example, what I can consider just a recurring dream, she calls a nightmare and she's like well, what's the dream? And I still have it to this day. But you know, somebody's coming after me and I pull out and I'm trying to shoot them and I'm squeezing the trigger. I think this keeps going, going, going and there's just no bang against the. The end there's nothing like, nothing happens, and it happens six nights a week. Just changes the, the theme of our dream. She's like what was that nightmare, you know?
Speaker 3:And then I got headaches and irritability, anxiety, depression, but the way that I was trained and all my training, I just continued to push and work through it. I'm always thinking about the next step and I don't sit back and acknowledge what's happening about me. So that was a step of like, okay, well, I'm gonna start working these things. And the other thing was that I was something enjoying what I was doing. You know the point jumping out of planes and doing things people paid money for. I I didn't enjoy it. Like how would we get dreaded nothing with jumping today and I, just like, all I want to do is sit and do nothing. But I hope you all can make sure that I outperform the guys below me, or at least perform just as good as they were. Just so, like, because I was there even so you bring it.
Speaker 2:You said this a couple times and it caught me. You bring an interesting duality to how we are in the military. So we're all trained as team. Right, we gotta be a team and we know that the success of the team is our success. Right, that is that's how we're trained. Complete the mission right, you need the team to do it.
Speaker 2:But the duality of it is that we are also taught to be fiercely independent. And the more subcultured you get right, the more you see this fierce independence, like moving forward. And I got to be there for my guys. You know the guys in your head. They don't have to be there for you, you got to be there for them, you know. So all this, it pushed forward and this intensity and we are notorious for just looking ahead, not not in the rear view. We can't control what's already happened, we can only control the now and getting to our goals. That's what we're always doing, and so you see this happening, this, this whole culture built, and then people are like you know how come they don't get intervention earlier? Like well, gee, let's talk about that. You know, like, why do you think? Because we're we're busy taking care of our people, we're busy figuring out getting it done. We're we're busy trying to complete a mission and make sure everybody's safe. We are constantly focused on everything but ourselves. And I don't know how many times I've heard that same like.
Speaker 2:I had a gentleman one time, um, that this is kind of warply humorous, the, the gentleman um needed to have some kind of special therapy. We brought him up to um was a VA in Minnesota or somewhere. And I get a call and they're like uh, so, mr so and so is like failing, the training of like failing, what does that mean? Like a 60, I mean, is this a past or fail? I don't understand what you mean. And so he had a tbi and that's what they were doing, this training. You know all the, the therapy and whatnot. But what they said was um, he were pretty positive, he has PTSD and that is interfering with what we're doing. And is your spider-man guy? No, this was a farmer, yeah and so. And he was really mad at them because what he was hearing from them was you're crazy, and that's that's not what they were trying to tell them. They're trying to tell them that the, the PTSD, is interfering, right. Well, anyways, long story short, he ends up coming home and I get on that phone with him and I have a good rapport. I was a, I was a you know farm girl, so I I kind of got country and we talked farm and stuff and through our conversation it finally came out and he actually broke down and cried.
Speaker 2:He had been having nightmares every single night for I don't know how many years and he never related this as an issue. He was so focused on taking care of his guys and when he was deploying and what needed to be done and all this stuff. He never once connected that his issues. He just thought it was all tbi stuff and that's what he had cognitive delays and whatnot, and he thought it was all related to that. And I had to explain the whole concept of the brain protecting itself and the skills that were taught.
Speaker 2:You know when we say, oh, you know, you have pts or ptsd and you have all these symptoms, well, those were survival techniques where we lived in deployment, right. Those symptoms were what's keeping us alive, right, and so trying to explain that all to him. But for years he suffered because he did not understand that he had ptsd and in the nightmares and whatnot. And even you said it. You're like I was just having a dream, like well, yeah, but somebody coming out to take you out. I don't know, steve, I'm thinking that that's not one of those fairy tale dreams I want to have yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And you know a lot of guys they don't want to lump. If there's, it's a double-edged sword or say, hey, I've got, uh, yeah, I've got a problem. Oh, you got a problem. All right, you're gonna go ahead and not deploy anymore. You're gonna write a desk for the rest of your career that's the consequence that nobody wants to fate none of.
Speaker 2:I mean when I was a flight nurse, if you, we wouldn't even take the miss yeah, the word didn't if was like a four little word to us, like oh, no, no, no, no, we're gonna fly it all. I mean I've. I watched my friend's eardrum rupture and he was smiling as blood's coming out of his like oh, I feel so much better. Like, oh, my god, not gonna be in a minute. Yeah, so that that we are gonna keep the mission going at any cost right, exactly so it's been.
Speaker 3:I would venture a second year, a large, you know, majority of your special operators out there who have gotten many deployments. They have something going on and it is not. They're just not going to give, say something, because what are they gonna do? Setting down and and and then now they're not deployable, they're not gonna do their job anymore. So that's, that's a terrifying thing. Just even for law enforcement and firefighters is the same thing right, they do terrible things or see terrible things, and then and they're gonna hey, you're right, yep, I'm good. Because the consequence of them saying they're not good is they don't get to do their job anymore and they don't get to do the one thing that they love and what may do when it does. If they're not ready for that, that no mix where they have to sit down and accept that that is no longer in their life.
Speaker 3:Than that's when we start turning down a dark path of depression, drinking even heavier than they already were, because most of our folks are heavy drinkers to begin with, those mechanisms, and then that's one of the transitioning battering or the service member. That's when we start looking at taking their own life, because who are they if they aren't this popular or if they're not who they've been their entire adult life. You know, I spent my entire adult life as a PJ. I don't know. I didn't know anything different, and now I'm on my way out. I didn't know what to do so and I unfortunately had a year to figure that out. Some of those don't get that and they're just hey, by the way you're transitioning out, to figure it out that that transition.
Speaker 2:When you said you had a year's because you were going through a medical board, correct, yeah, yeah. So um Z and I have watched this we have we have a lot of familiarity with med boards and what I noticed when I first started in that as a as she's a recipient herself um, that I saw this and it was worse for the garden reserve because, let's say, you were um caught a SP on the in the military and you were also one in the civilian sector. If there was an injury in the military side that made you non-retainable, there's a high chance that that same thing was going to prevent you from continuing your civilian job as a cop. And so in one felt swoop, their entire identity was gone or leaving or at risk or whatever, and I would watch this grieving process happen. I mean you, I could almost like sometimes I wish I had like a checkbox and be like anger check bargaining check.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it was. They would call me and I mean, god, I've heard it, all you know, and they just you know they'd go off and they'd be mad and then and then eventually and everybody had a different time frame then there would be that kind of submission, you know, that acceptance, and not saying they liked it, I'm just saying that they kind of it was almost more like defeat, like, and then I would hear things like you know, well, fine, if the military is going to take this from me, I'm going to take everything I can from them. And I would get so mad at our leadership across the board because they would translate this and I, when I say leadership, I mean like commanders, super, whoever it is we're talking to wing commanders, anybody and they would translate this into them trying to milk a system, then being a problem child, yeah, and their problem child. And they're trying to, and I'm like, okay, hold on. And so I'd have to like reframe this perspective to them, like listen, you know, and and have had situations where that commander that was giving them shit next thing I know a year later is calling me very sheepishly because now they're in a situation and they're at risk and being medically boarded or whatever is going on with them.
Speaker 2:You know, and I held all of them in the same grace, but there was that snarky ass side of me that was like there you go, motherfucker. How are you liking it now? Like now, all of a sudden, you understand it, but you couldn't. You couldn't when it wasn't you.
Speaker 3:You right, yeah, so yeah, there's, there's a it's it's telling of a leader, but what? What kind of leader they are when they have pressure there's above them or question on them? You know, we had individuals after everything happened with me and I started on medical board process 30 other people, 30 other operators, 35 other operators medically retired at the same time, and so now we have more operators retiring out of this one squatter than apps off in the hole. Okay, the question was like, why, like, why, like, you can't. And then the mandate was you can't let anybody else who made medically retire on a date. And it's like you can't make that happen like this.
Speaker 2:There's retention standard. Do you either meet it or you don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And the thing was was you had leaders at the app stock commander level saying, hey, this is what's going to happen, getting involved in things at the tactical level that they shouldn't be, and so that was. The problem was now you had other commanders being pressured by their leadership saying, like, why don't you came to medical retire anybody else out here? Yeah, you're gonna say some magic words Like you can't make that happen, you can't deny somebody care, yeah, what they need. So there was a lot of discriminal folks that came out of that particular unit after our medical retirement process, or the exodus, the mass activist, so to speak.
Speaker 2:When you were. I'm gonna go back to the beginning. I'm gonna go backwards a little bit again deploying. You made a comment the one thing that they love to do is the one thing that's breaking them right, and I resonate with that loudly and I'm sure I'm see you relate to that too. What was it during your career when you were again? We don't need weedy details and I don't wanna put you feeling uncomfortable, but what was your best win and your biggest challenge when you were a paramatic and, I'm sorry, a PJ when you were? You're more than a paramatic. Yeah, I do a little of everything. When you were deploying, what were the big wins or the big big good and the big challenges at the same time?
Speaker 3:I don't know, excuse me right now One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, don't forget. Don't forget, I don't know I'll go right after the thing, when you were saying memory and you were listing stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm like I gotta go talk to a psychologist, so I call it mommy brain. Goldfish brain whatever you wanna call it, okay.
Speaker 3:Forever writing lists over here I just wanna remember this particular thing, the challenges. I'm gonna take the wins, what I enjoyed. So I wouldn't have gotten to the special mission unit if the deployments that I was doing were still there, like if we were still doing cast attack and they didn't shut it down for the Pedro, for an angel weapon system, so to speak. They didn't shut those down. I would have kept doing that. I really enjoyed that and what I enjoyed was the problem solving and quick. I had a few crisis action and mission planning. We get a scramble call and so radio call on the net. You go to the so we operate the system, so we operation center, most of the team goes over to the helicopter, starts getting their kid on, starts prepping whatever it is that they that I told them to prep and I have. We have five minutes to receive the information and then five minutes to get off the ground. So 10 minutes total. So while we're putting kid on, getting our guns and everything, and I'm looking at we're getting great coordinates. We're getting how many patients there are, what caused the event, what their condition is now. So a nine line of all of that, and so I get to think in my head how is this gonna go, who am I gonna put in, where are the patients gonna go? And you know what's the threat, what's our threat level. So I really enjoyed that, that excitement, that thinking. And down south was a lot different and South, southern Afghanistan was a lot different than Northern Afghanistan because you had or it's, sixties. Sixties can only carry so much weight, that's so much altitude, you know, with weather, or at least temperature outside. So we had a mine, a couple guys stepping a mine up, really high up in the mountains. Well, there's only enough weight, a lot, for one PJ and one Medrock to go up. They pick up one person per so. That's that's. I mean we're gonna take everything off the ground and had to select who was gonna go and it was gonna go execute its body recovery along with down south. You know we had a mass casualty. Who was gonna land? Where were the patients gonna go? Am I gonna shuttle patients in and out of here? And on one particular mission where that illa was getting shot so much that I was putting that illa at such a grave risk that that thinking gets shot down. And if that gets shot down on their next rotation out of here, then we're in a in a never-willed trouble. So luckily it didn't that particular illa got pretty much had to get sent back home because I didn't shot so many times and nobody else on the team was shot, which is a miracle in itself. So those those are like.
Speaker 3:That was my favorite time period was working as a leader and problem solving, and there's just a lot of different scenarios, and there were, you know, from resupplying troops that were out in an area that nobody else could get to because of weather conditions in our illos, or one of the few that could fly still, to getting a patient off of a really high up post and this particular individual. We picked them up and they didn't have medical tools there, and so when we pulled this guy off and started looking at the treatment that was done, there was chicken feathers everywhere and I couldn't understand why there was like a feather that was all over this dude and the aircraft. And as we started evaluating his injuries, he got the shot under his armpits and through and through. And so one of the guys pulled off a chicken wing and looked at it and there was skin. So they had taken the chicken and cut its wings off and the skin cut its wings and used it as an inclusive dressing.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they plugged the holes on both sides, listen. So we pulled off and cleaned off his wound, gave him some antibiotics, started a line and then needle darted him once we got him to the FST, which is about an eight minute flight, got him in there double chesty or bilateral chesty, then eating and sure, piling. Pretty wild to see and try to fathom where these people's mindsets were when they were getting overrun by the Taliban up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Quick get a chicken.
Speaker 2:Did he have a taste for chicken after Chicken name? Yeah, that's the other thing is also dude.
Speaker 3:we pick up individuals after IEDs and helicopter crashes and solar all burnt up and you go back and we can. Only we can't go to the chow hall. We have a food brought to us.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is why you guys are such a pain in the ass to deal with when you're not in your bubble. I'm just gonna point that out, but I love you anyway.
Speaker 3:They're brought to us in a giant green tub called Mermites and the other, if you remember one. We opened it up and then the only thing that was left was like barbecue ribs for chicken and I was like I'm good, no chicken today. I'm eating those. It doesn't look like the patient that I just had. I'll pass. Yeah, I'll read it in cereal or milk. I'll just do another.
Speaker 2:Where's the MREs?
Speaker 3:Exactly. So that was a challenge was going through that, but I would say the challenges I faced the most I don't call them losses, but what frustrated me the most was leadership. So I was a leader, fighting to do the things I needed to do, and then you had individuals who were thinking that they're being a leader, but they're not. They have no clue where they're at. But when we're landing from that particular mission, it was a mass gravity eight or nine patients in this health-borne IED and just shuttling them off back and forth in the heat of helicopters covered in blood and bullet holes. And we're just sitting there, luckily, like we survived this one, and so, with my helmet strapped above me, I'm just sitting back.
Speaker 3:Our shift ended and so I got a keen way to put back and go to bed. We're gonna clean off this kilo and it's gonna get packed up and sent back to the States because they have nothing more to do. But it's quiet and the first thing that this officer comes over and tells me is like hey, you guys okay, yep, okay. This is Colonel, colonel Stone. So he said that you guys need to wear your helmets when you're flying. In Everywhere you go, you need to wear your helmet and you need to make sure you shave in the morning.
Speaker 2:Oh my.
Speaker 4:God Tucking officers, so to kiss my grits.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like this guy said it and he's like yeah, and I was like thanks for telling me I'm gonna go kill him. I was like what?
Speaker 2:And I was like you, probably serious too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was dead serious. I was gonna go strangle him, I was gonna go choke him to like that, just because that was the most inappropriate in the opportunity time to tell me something like that. Also, I don't care about that. This guy, how about this guy? Come over here and clean out the blood on the upper half, or you can come and see all the bullet holes.
Speaker 2:That's what I would have said. I've been like, hey, no problem, like I will go shave, but he can just come over here and clean up this mess in here.
Speaker 4:No problem, 29.03,. Well, you've got all that shit going on Ridiculous.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was that kind of those types of interactions where we also had it in the operation center.
Speaker 3:It's easy for them, for these folks in that area, to get celebratory and be like they're a part of things and forget where they're at and so it's all kind of just like a game to them and they don't see what we see. And that's not a fault of their own, but it was a very pressuring experience. When coming back from a mission we got worried that there's another mission and I said we'll just send that nine line over radio, we'll pick it up on our way back. And they didn't, and so I assumed it wasn't a very critical mission. They didn't know that, like the patient wasn't dying Right. And then when we landed, got our first patient off, refilled, landed and picked up the nine line, which about 12 minutes transpired between that time. And this guy hands me a piece of paper. Look at it and it's a cat out the window. Dude, it's a critical casualty. Bilateral amputation lower leg amputation from a dismounted patrol IED. And.
Speaker 3:I'm like, immediately human. I'm like I can't believe these. They didn't send this over the radio. We could have been there 10 minutes ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's the difference of life and death right there. So immediately hopped in the aircraft and pulled this spike blood. Let's get rid of it. So throw blood at this dude and do everything we can for this guy. Picked him up and his buddies were pretty much all like giving him a hug and kissing him on the forehead because they assumed he wasn't making it. I had to push them off of him because the hospital was literally four minutes away and I was like I can get into the hospital, we can get into surgery, right, yeah, get off. Yeah, like I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but get out of here. So we spike blood, get blood on him, give him some ketamine, check the tourniquets, get him into the hospital. And I get really frustrated because there's a doctor outside that stops him and he's like Talking to him, asking him to his pain level.
Speaker 4:Get him in there, man no legs. What do you think?
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and that's exactly what I said is like he doesn't have broken legs and he's reaching in his pockets. I was like, what are you looking for? They get in cases that grenades also like first, I don't care if he has a friend 120 round strap to his back, he's an American soldier, he's not bringing in a grenade like an insurgent with a telegram page. Second, like he's about to die, get him in the cutting or immediately saws funeral this dog and they just like he.
Speaker 3:that's the way he was trained right and like not understanding the gravity of the situation so that that right there was, just like this guy says no where he's at.
Speaker 2:That training is Ever like that response training. We, you know, we did our little like field day training out in the you know one, your annual training, which was I know you're all laughing at right now, steve, but you know we'd go out there and play hospital out in the field and all that he's smirking, I can see I'm smirking right now. And so, anyways, I, you know, I actually Most of mine was actually obstetrics, not by choice, whole other story but I did lots labor and delivery. And we go out and have OB doc with me and he's newer and he comes up to me. He goes, okay, like how's this go down? And I was like Call mass casualty, like everything you learn, flip it what. And unlike if they take the most resources there to lose chance to get it, and so I'm going through triage. Or though, at his face he was just like jaw dropped and he's like God, we're not trained this way. I'm like that's why we do this training and it was very prevalent.
Speaker 2:When COVID hit I actually had a friend of mine I was health administrator call me and said, hey, our docs are struggling because now they had to start triaging like mass cow right, it's like a whole different way of thinking and they were struggling. They're like we can't do that, we can't do it that way, and they're like, yeah, yeah, better be ready because we might have to do it that way. And so and the whole point of it is just that training right. Just, you knew you were there and if you had had an experienced ER trauma doc, he would have been like Listening to you and probably might have been patting him down as you're running in, but not probably saying as much as Assessing him to get him on the table, to get things going right.
Speaker 4:So you're saying there's a difference between the plastics and derm guys than the a little.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh, a little. I'm sure Steve knows this is the difference a little.
Speaker 3:That I mean they're all these different things that you know. Let's just, yeah, passing away, because even Getting him off of the helicopter and onto an ambulance, which is a 400 meter distance, they were trying to put him on a rig shock so that wheels Just carry him.
Speaker 3:Disguise on a Israeli litter. Just come up and carry him Over there, because you guys can't figure out how to secure him on there, like so I just always pick them up and turn him over because get people away. Yeah, so he used to having one certain way. You can't problem solve it. This is Even though this is why you two typically do and things are going wrong, like I don't have, we won't have time to deal with your you having to figure out this problem. We're gonna go over here.
Speaker 3:So, after experiencing that and then coming back, we would hop in a, the helicopter would go refill, we hop in a box truck and drive back over to our place of business. We're HR, whatever you want to call it, and I was just pretty, pretty human. I was pretty upset in the truck and I Walked into the, to the Intel, into the operation center, kicking the door and then swing open and smash it and so it's really loud. So they would turn around, sorry, and their attention, and they're like well, I was a good mission, right. I was like no, like well, easy to live. I was like I hope so. Here's the problem. Like that, you guys all in here in your air conditioning, you think it's all good and fun, you're all part of a game and, like, you want to feel like you're part of things, running a piece of paper off to our aircraft, like that guy I don't know if he's gonna live or not.
Speaker 3:We wasted over 15 minutes because you guys didn't want to relay a message over the radio. At least, like this guy guys, you guys are contributing, contributing factor because of whatever came your play in here. But I had a lot of lots to say and obviously everybody in there Got emotional and they were crying. I was very upset and I walked out of there and walked over straight over to the commander and I was like hey, just you know, I flipped out on the operation center folks, all the Intel folks I'm pretty much anybody involved in this and they're probably gonna recommend you send me home. Just so you know. Just so you're not the one side of the bus.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so he's like okay, you know, I was like what are you gonna do, sir? And he's like I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna follow up. Your anger was more anger. So he backed me up and I think they got they.
Speaker 2:They received a message of like I don't, you guys understand what your role is, and we're here to help people not to be a part of things or that requires critical thinking there's a lot of self-charing in that staffer world and I mean, I know, em see, you've seen it, and there's a lot of like look at us, we're so awesome and setting things up for their success. And I well, em see, you know I never subscribed to that thinking, which caused a lot of problems. Um, but it is. I'm like, how, in God's name, do you not see what the hell's going on?
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're getting a report and a nine liner and saying a double amputee, let me take it out after my tea right like minutes, seconds, like there's just everything drops right, like, yeah, I get it and maybe it's just because I'm a nurse, I don't know, but I mean like you know you, the preservation of human life, and that's exactly what we're here to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It is that different mentality. So okay, so we're like totally busting that hour. But I think that conversation is like really good and I I want to put this forward now. Okay, so you, you did all that and you, uh, you rocked it out pretty hardcore and then you did have your year and then you got out Kind of briefly, tell me like did you? Did you crash and burn or did you rise like the phoenix? I mean, I know, eventually you rose like the phoenix because I know where you're at, but what was happening when you stepped out the door?
Speaker 3:Um, yes, so that ultimately what led to the pathway out was A training accident that I'm the part of all the seedlier of the guys that especially mentioned me and went on. Just some rock climbing out of the way to Idaho and One of the anchors that was placed On a 70 foot cliff or A single pitch flying as Gatua. Repelling off that anchor failed and one guy he was rebelling about halfway down the anchor failed. He felt about 30 feet. Another one of our guys was attached to the anchor itself and so the weight of that sky that was on the road pulled the other one off. So you felt full 70 feet first out. So Me and the guys over there, we treated Peter and they are best but ultimately being a fascinating, so that's that kind of was kind of like the straw that broke the camera's back.
Speaker 3:I lost a lot of teammates and treated a lot of folks Over the years, but this one was very different to me. It was at the intellect. We were already seeing a psychologist and he was A young son at the time and his wife was pregnant with their daughter yeah, talking about where we're going to go to dinner that night and he was just sitting there. It was supposed to be a morale building, team building trip to you and now One of us is not coming home and I was the team. So I was attempting a lot of responsibility and feeling very responsible for it and Pulled myself up a team, utilized the resources in the unit Specifically a psychologist Uh, specifically a psychologist, neuropsychologist, physical therapist tranquillism Everything that we had to try to reset myself and came back on the team, did a short, short nose deployment. Contingency operation went out, dinner admission came back and this was April of 2020 and we're getting ready to boy again in May. So Prep thing for where I was about to deploy to for the actual, for our real deployment, or for month, and then get a call that the investigation is closed out for his accident. That's actually there's always an accident safety investigation and what they can.
Speaker 3:Uh, listen, okay, there's nothing that we could have done, what happened? Nothing we could have changed the outcome, but somebody needs to be held accountable and it's going to be used to see you there and so with that, I was removed from my position at that unit. I was removed from the unit itself and I was given 30 days, pretty much, to the pcs. I was told to come in on a weekend so that the rest of the team didn't see me unpack my gear and and I wasn't allowed to go to the unit at all. So that was a really Heavy hit that just drove me into a path with depression and the unit that they were going to send me to Was back to my unit I came from, which is Vegas, um, and I just Knew the negative influences that were there waiting right, because I actually go there With the destroyed my family.
Speaker 3:Um, I'm gonna have to. I'm Like I'm in a position where I like I got nothing left to offer, so I've chose the medical retirement route with the ptsd diagnosis, worked with psychologists to to pursue that option and ultimately Got that. Um, so my reviewer, my year, processed out. I was thinking like, well, what am I gonna do now? Uh, and so I had some internships. I knew I wanted to be in the human performance space. I wanted to, uh, have a gym. I wanted to have like little tags, like a recovery center kind of thing. Physical performance. I wanted to be pure towards veterans and law enforcement firefighters and had the opportunity to intern for a guy at exos. Exos is a pro performance gym, right.
Speaker 2:Other promote it. Exos is awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I interned with them and, uh, ultimately I was like, hey, alex, is there gonna be a job after this? He was like, well, I mean no, sorry. And I was like, alex, what am I gonna do? Is I can even start doing what you said you're gonna be at like, believe in yourself the way I believe you can? Yeah. So he was really a strong mentor To help me start the nonprofit shows, the stripes, um, and it didn't know what I wanted out of it.
Speaker 3:And so, having his guidance and his connections, to say, hey, ask exos, can we use your facilities to bring veterans and first responders into exos performance facilities and treat them like either a professional athlete or a special operator, but not addressing just the physical aspects of bringing in mental health clinicians and doing the physical and the mental health functions. So we bring in eight veterans and first responders at a time. It's a three month total program. Three weeks of it is at exos, nine weeks is telehealth. We've partnered with exos. Obviously.
Speaker 3:We've partnered with their body and several other organizations that help fund the individual to go through the program. So it's completely free for them. They would get the strengthening program. They're each to get a diet-efficient console food made for them, specifically for them. Physical therapy they get occupational therapy and then their mental health, psychotherapy, both individual and group settings, and then we have that massage and other modalities of recovery in there with us cold punch, hot punch, saunas, things like that. And so we've been doing that for two years now, started that in April of 2021 and executed our first cohort in August of 2021. And now we're on our sixth cohort, which hopefully we can start in March.
Speaker 2:That is awesome, that is. And so for the audience, if you don't know, when we say exos and we're all over here like yeah, it's real cool and stuff, Actually and correct me if I'm wrong, Steve they rehab like pro athletes, like NFL, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they're claimed to fame as professional sports NSL, mlb, nba, nhl. So all professional athletes will go to their facility for physical rehab or just physical camps, training camps and most notably is the NFL Cup by Brett. So any, I won't say any, but most NFL, you know drafties or hopefuls that go to exos. Most of them get picked up. I think they get like 86% success rate of individuals that go to the combat, get drafted as a NFL, so that's their biggest thing to fame. When they've got corporate kids, all corporate Right.
Speaker 2:And the military. I mean we, we sent tons of. I sent lots and lots of people to exos and I haven't think one of them met some of the pro players before, but it was a sweet gig, I mean. And you're on site. You know you have to stay nearby, right, you have to go there and pretty much live for that length of time and so, yeah, so it's a super sweet gig. So and and you know it's funny you do what. Everything you've done right over the years, all the training, all your medical background, everything has now just in in your hate to say but and your trauma right, and your recovery of how you recovered all wraps up and you bloomed this amazing nonprofit Right Shield and stripes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think you know with the team that we have that started it and things he used to work. I think everyone's got some sort of investment in this forest. They understand that they're, all you know, veterans themselves or spouses of active military members or involvement first responder community, so they've all. They all have some sort of trauma. Right.
Speaker 3:And they all, they all dressed it and they all it's very, it's very insubmitted and that's very important. And so you have these individuals that have credibility to go out and say, hey, it's, it's okay, Like it's a seek out something option for help. And and one thing that folks have come to us for it is because they can't go to their unit or their you know whoever should their psychologist, because they don't trust them with number one, because then they'll end up actually losing the thing that they want, that they've valued so much. And I think there's a lot of great programs out there. But this particular method has helped me and several like me, because it just going only to a mental health clinician can only do so much. It's it's working out, can do so much. But if you put all of those things together and address every aspect of your body and your mind, even spirit, then we can really reset the body. And I think, unfortunately, as I look at Congress these days, the VA, they're all looking for like, what's the push button, what's the easy button thing?
Speaker 3:We'll give them some pharmaceuticals and then like call that good or we'll give them some sort of plant-based medicine and we'll call back. You just got to go take this drug once. And then all your calls are see, first off, and it's not a lot of money in it, and meanwhile it's like 15 to 20 years to create all the traumas that we've experienced, that they've been embedded into our DNA. Well, how do we address that? It's going to take time in this three month program. It's time consuming and it costs a lot to put somebody through there. But the impact is greater than just the individual. It might be the individual or the one person going through the cohort, but it's their family.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say. I bet your wife and your kids are appreciative.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, like it's the community and the families that see this new individual come out, and that's what I want. I want people to see that as it takes work, it's not a point you can drink or smoke or anything like that, it's you can just the problem or solve. This is work, just like it's a work to get that trauma.
Speaker 4:So it's a work to fix this. You can really appreciate the multi-modality approach You're kind of attacking this from all angles to reach the best outcome there is and especially appreciate too. You mentioned the cohort size is eight. Did I hear that right?
Speaker 3:Correct, yeah, specifically on purpose.
Speaker 4:So that way you can keep small, intimate groups versus you walk into a room with 50 other people. It gets a little bit harder to speak and process some of what needs to be done. I think that that's great yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3:And you start when we started with four, went to six, got to eight and we were looking at doing 10. So we got to eight. There is a potential for an individual to isolate themselves and then the individual like myself, introverts and folks like myself would have trauma. It's easy to isolate. I'm not going to hang out tonight. Well, yeah, a group you're suffering in the gym with a group that you're eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with. You're sitting in a cold lunch suffering with, and then you're celebrating these victories and we have mentor time. When we talk about these victories, there is no escape. And what? I'm afraid, if I get that we need two large groups that you'd have to click swarm, and that was, that's almost. That would negatively impact the group. So it's very important to keep it small, at least the archivore size sizes also.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, that makes sense, so that's that's impressive.
Speaker 4:So for shields and stripes, are you looking specifically for veterans who come out of the special operations field or is I know you mentioned to law enforcement, but would this be open for any veteran or specific to those in special warfare?
Speaker 3:I prefer actually less the less special warfare. I prefer the conventional force because there are a lot of organizations out there for special operators and we have a specific standard of care that we are used to. The have all these resources thrown at us while we're in. I would never say no to a special operator, but I want the folks that never have this, I want the people that have never even known something that, like this, existed. You know those imagery and even staff. It doesn't have to be contacts trauma.
Speaker 3:Several of the folks that we see have MSD. We have some sort of military sexual trauma, law enforcement. When they go through the first thing, a lot of them say well, I haven't seen what you see. Well, I go back and say I haven't seen what you see and I have never shown up to a domestic violence, domestic abuse case. I have never seen a child abuse case in the United States, let alone be that across my town or down the street from where I live. So I think there's the folks that say that, but there's a lot. I think they don't want to acknowledge it. They feel like they're not worthy of the care that they're receiving. And they're more than worthy. Yeah, those folks that I want to hear is the ones that feel like they're not worthy, but they're more than worthy and you know, just as just worthy as anybody.
Speaker 2:I'm going to see what they can accomplish to, you know, to go from a state of I'm not going to say non-function, but less functioning, survival, and not optimally, yeah, maybe in a survival mode state, to going to thriving, you know, and empowering themselves and thrive as a whole. Different mindset. So, yeah, absolutely Okay. So, like I went way over normal, we tried to do an hour but the conversation was way too good. I do have a final question Do you have green feet?
Speaker 3:I do not. Oh, as I, as I, uh, as everybody was at the bar getting it, the the at that line of thinking, where I was, the aircrew members, the Jolly aircrew members, were also getting it. Yeah. And I was like I don't feel like getting something, like I wanted something very specific to the community and I do have. Is this like the angel of mercy year? Yeah. I have that tattoo on my back.
Speaker 2:Ah, so so the audience doesn't know this the fill-in size probably like what the hell are we talking about?
Speaker 4:Green feet what?
Speaker 2:are those. So when you say green feet, we all smirk and think of the PJs. And is PJ specific or special forces specific? That's PJ specific, pj specific, yeah, and so they tattoo on their little touch. Is it there? Is it anywhere on their butt?
Speaker 3:On their butt cheek.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm sure it's a fine butt, cheek, Um, but they have little green feet on their butt and so that's what they have tattooed on there, so that's that's their thing. So we had to ask. I mean that I'm surprised I didn't make it the first question, but you did good.
Speaker 4:You did good detox. Man, I'm so glad you came and and shared some time with us today. This has been incredible conversation and just appreciate, like I said, you taking the time to to do this and get vulnerable and share what that recovery looked like, and what you're doing now to help others. This is this is incredible, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me on, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 2:All right, any last thoughts, steve, anything you want the audience to kind of remember beside your green feet.
Speaker 3:That's my lack of green feet. I can't breathe.
Speaker 4:I can't breathe.
Speaker 3:Now I just appreciate. If you know anybody that that is suffering you know is a civil conversation I'll let him know it's all over his back to the. The same same way of getting through anything throughout all my challenges. You know, with selection I was going through selection for the special mission unit or or to become a DJ. It was always what's in, it's always an influence, whether it's the next lunch or it's the next breakfast or it's the next step. You know there was a time period during the special mission you know selection where we had to walk 40 plus miles with a lot of weight and carrying stuff in our hands and it was, but like the last, every time I took a step I was walking with hot coals, but it was always all right. Next step, next step. So same same goes for any mental health challenges. It's always, you know, never give up. So it was the next step and eventually it's going to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, I'm seeing what you got. Her wheels are spinning.
Speaker 4:She's processing right now. It's exactly what this face is. I'm just kind of like, wow, there's a lot of what was shared today, some bits you know from working previous cases, some personal, and it's just all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:All good.
Speaker 2:Well, I just want to put out that to make it clear that Shield and Stripes the reason why it's named Shield and Stripes is because it's first responders and it's military. Am I correct on that? That's where I took a little assumption on that, but it seemed to fit. And so if you are a first responder, civilian or military, or you are a veteran and this is something you're interested in you're not sure where to go. You can reach out to us at both the bedpans and we will gladly connect you with Steve. You can reach out to Shields and Stripes directly. You can reach out to Coming Home. Well, they'll get a message to us, just reach out. So, steve, thank you so much. I think this was amazing, really, really awesome. I was so happy we could nail you down because he was trying to nail Jella to the wall, but I got him. I kept him like Michelle, where'd he go? She's like, oh, he's on a wool tour and I'm like, okay, get him when he comes back. I still train PJs and still travel around.
Speaker 3:So it's your last week. Good, I'll be out next week training some PJs out in Vegas.
Speaker 2:Awesome, all right. So, from all of us here at Bullets to Bedpans MZ, we're out. Take care, stay safe. All right, everybody, we'll see you guys, next time Bye.