As an intern, I haven’t found my place in the hospital world yet. I’ve had the chance to work in several different areas and do a lot of different things. I’ve done adult ICU and ER as well as Peds ICU and ER. I’ve even dabbled in research. But by far my most intense and transformative experience was deploying with DMAT–which is disaster medical assistance team. Living in the southeast, most of our disasters are either hurricanes and tornados. Some times both at the same time. Few things are more devastating than losing everything all at once. And that is the unfortunate outcome when it comes to hurricanes and tornados.
A lot of out deployments were support for the National Guard. Fortunately not many were medically difficult. I gave a lot of breathing treatments. Hurricanes and tornadoes stir up a lot of mold and dust which in turn makes breathing more difficult. A lot of people died before reaching us which would have made our job much more medically difficult. We’re always set up as a field hospital with generators and potable water, but when broadly quite literally disappear, the only way in is usually by helicopter.
More difficult was the emotional toll. There was always someone who literally lost everything that they owned and had no resources to start over. The elderly on a fixed income. The family who were already had difficult circumstances. The children who lost a parent or the parent who lost a child. The most haunting memory was seeing some kid’s stuffed bear lying in a puddle. I wondered if the kid would ever get it back or even if the kid was still alive.
Plopping down in a community for a couple weeks an witnessing their most traumatic days will affect me for the rest of my life. It’s hard to find my place in this world as in I know I have the ability to do this job; I don’t always know that I have the mental capacity to endure witnessing others’ suffering. Compounded with the thought of ‘I’m doing my best, but this person still might die’ really gets to me sometimes.