Michaela Shafer and Patricia Davis

00:07 My name is Pat Davis. Today is April 15th. 2021. I am 65 years old and I will be interviewing Nikki Shafer. She is a good friend of mine from the Air Force.

00:22 And my name is Mikayla or Mickey. Schaefer. Today is April 15th. 2021. I'm 68 years old and despite that Pat and I are best friends.

00:35 All right, let's get started. I have some questions for you, Nikki.

00:40 Let's start with this one. What were some of the reasons that you decided to join the military? And how old were you when you join? And how did you even decide on the Air Force? There was little to no thought involved in joining the Airforce whatsoever. I never even thought about it. My father had been in the Army Air Corps in World War II, but that never came up on. I was a nurse working in a civilian Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and I was freezing to death. I thought it was the coldest place I've ever been in my life and I hated it and it just so happened that a recruiter walked through the emergency department that I was running and he said, is anybody interested in the military? And I looked at him and I said, what can you do for me? And he said, what do you want? I said, I need health care for my child because she's costing me a fortune, being sick all the time, and I need to go someplace.

01:40 He came back two weeks later and said, you know, you get full health care in the Air Force, and how about Tucson Arizona? And I literally signed on the dotted line that day, no more thought we didn't discuss it with anybody, just fine and away. I went, it was no more complicated than that. So and I thought I was going in for one tour and I stayed for 30 years and twenty days. That's right, now, in 30 years and twenty days, couple of funny moments that happened during that time.

02:20 Well, my husband was also an so that's always a trick to try to manage a dual military family. But one of my favorite moments was Gary was deployed to Bosnia and I was stuck at home and I had we had three kids and it seemed like about the fourth month that he would be gone. Everything in the house would start breaking. It was just like magic every time and I would just be so frustrated that he needed to come home and fix everything cuz he could fix anything. So, one day I got a hold of the time people and they called him in Bosnia, and he called me back. And he goes, what on Earth is wrong. Are you? I'm having to call you from Bosnia. And I said, our dryer doesn't work, and I don't have any money to see, cuz they put the boy on, which is what he always called her son, put the boy on who was only 8 years old. And I said, what's he going to do?

03:21 Sitting in the laundry room and push the dryer up in the air and my eight-year-old, son got underneath, while he was talking to his father, in Bosnia and fixed my dryer, I said, well, there you go. I mean, but I was very relieved cuz I was very aggravated about the whole thing reminds me of. When I went to school. I went to mass, I'm sure. But when I went to school, my very first research paper, I was still typing, we still had typewriters and I kept having to change the research and I mean so and then you'd have to retype this hundred pages of stuff because it wouldn't lineup. And so finally Gary says we have got to get a computer and I was like terrified of this thing and I would walk around it. Like it was a wild animal. It was so funny. I would make this big circle around it and it also had a dot matrix printer. So you have that paper with a hole and so I would write a paper.

04:21 So it would just do all night. But that was, that was too when I was young, my most favorite one when I was older, which probably could have gotten me in a lot of trouble, but was still a lot of fun. I had a commander who he just did not like nurse if I was a nurse by trade and I was a colonel and I was running the level 1 Trauma Center, which he just detest it that I was doing that, and he decided that every Commander's call. He was going to call me out and talked about my doctor's or fuss about my nurses. Now. I have the best doctors in the world because they could deploy constantly cuz they could do trauma, they could do anything. They were great. But he just, he would call them. I'm redheaded and he would call him the redheaded stepchildren. And you would just have names for them all the time, and I was so mad at him one time.

05:21 And in commuters call, it was about three hundred of us in a big Auditorium. And I made this huge color wheel. And when he started to call on me to start ragging on me, like you always did I held up the color wheel and I spent it and I said, what are you going to call us today? And I think the whole room with who are you kidding me?

05:42 You just did that to the general, but you know what? You never bothered me again.

05:53 You mentioned this before. Mickey about Gary and I'm being a door military family. You know, what was that? Like you. No, tell me about that.

06:06 Well, for us. The problem was that, we were both medical and so there was always going to be an issue about chain of command. Stop. Do, you know, they really don't want other state of command in any way, shape, or form. So, when I got selected for my Master's program, when I was at first lieutenant, Gary got out of active duty because he wanted to, but as it turned out, it worked out because they had switched almost all of the aerovac admission to the reservists. And he wanted to fly are backed up all I ever wanted to do. You never wanted to do anything else until he spend his 28 years, all flying are back. So I helped us handle that a little bit better because wherever I went because I had Advanced degrees, they always put me on a big base but usually had a flying Squadron. So that helped however, because he flew airvac, he was gone all the time. He would come

07:06 Charger for monkey, be back for 4 months. He be gone for four months. Yeah. It was just all the time. He was gone.

07:12 And so the kids would get upset because my husband's to cook in our family. And so when they find out that that had to go, they would start crying and go. And it's true, you know, it was interesting that I never really worried about him. And I don't know why. I think you just go to a place in your head where you can't sit there and think about all the things that can go wrong. You know, he was flying right into the wards are so, you know, and I was I should have been terrified now, I would be terrified probably, but if it was my son flying in there, I'd be scared to death, but I never did. I never was worried about him. It just seemed he always came home and told me that horrible stuff like the way, you know, the engine started on fire and they had to land and it filled up with some nice and don't tell me that stuff that just used to scare me to death. So I don't know. It is interesting, though.

08:12 That I just sit home and you understand what's going on. I was trying to watch the news when he deployed the first time to Desert Storm and you know, the kids were watching it Britney was only five, Sharon was maybe twelve and Britney would just wrap her arms around the TV and just scream bloody murder. They're shooting at us.

08:35 And she would get hysterical. I said, honey. It's not your dad. He's in England for God's sake, he's not even there. But you couldn't convince her of that and Sharon got excruciating headache so bad that they actually scanned. Her thinking she had some sort of a brain tumor and she was sick the entire time. He was gone the first time and then when he walked back in the door at the headache is here, and she never had and I was like, okay, I might have to handle this, a little differently, the kids are doing it. So we are going to have to turn on the TV when dad's gone cuz they get too stressed out. So it's just things that you had the kind of learn. I'm sure every wife had to learn that, or every spouse have to learn that. I just, I was interested in what was going on, cuz I knew he was there, but I had to learn to let that go because the kids were really stressed out by that. So,

09:32 And how long did it? How many times can you deploy? When you were married from 2002? Desert Storm, when he went to Somalia? All before?

09:48 Iraq and then once the Iraqi Freedom started, then it was like, you know, he kind of went on active reserve it. So he flew all the time. I mean, he basically was gone. He would be gone for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. He would be on orders sometimes, for, for 6 months. But most of the time you'd be gone for 2 or 3 weeks. I do think that the one thing we learned is that you have to be pretty self-sufficient. People. You can't meet needy it all because they aren't there, you know, you have to be able to take everything. The most annoying part of that was when he would come home, then he would try to you know, reinsert himself into the family. After you've been gone for four or six months and you're like we've got this being part of the family. So difficult these I thought about being a military family. No, I did not deploy. So I will probably talk about that in a minute.

10:47 Did you ever have to deploy and try to manage that while?

10:54 No, I mean I guess we were extremely fortunate and it is odd that I was in for thirty years and did not deploy. But I had this bizarre career where I was doing weird things, like going to school. I spent two years in a master's program, through the Air Force. And then I also spent 4 years almost for your 3 and 1/2 years in a PhD program. When Desert Storm yet. I was in my Ph.D program and I was the first nurse in the air force to be selected to go get her PC. Now, some people had come in with phds, but I was the only one that had ever been sent to school today. So I was in school so I couldn't deploy during that and then when it got to be,

11:42 Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of the time, I would have been perfectly happy to go, but it turned out that because I had the PHD, I was in these weird jobs. I just didn't let me go, and I was a commander and, and start commanders went, and I begged to go a couple of times. But they decided I was, that was not a great idea. But I was fortunate to do other kinds of things like working Hyperbaric medicine. I mean, that was so much fun. I learned how to do diving medicine in the Air Force. We were the lead Agency for that, and that particular job allowed me then to do some research, which led me into my Ph.D program, which is really why I was able to go, cuz I have that already, all thought out and ready to go. I did get my doctorate at the University of Texas. I think one of the funny stories about that was that

12:40 Because we were the first eight nurses, that started a doctorate at the University of Texas. There was not a doctoral program before we got there. And so there were eight of us started and they didn't really know how to deal with this. We were in the school of biomedical sciences and research. So we did not get our degree in nursing. It was in biomedical, research and Sciences, wealth of the Air Force, sent me off, to get a doctorate, and they thought they had a very distinct idea about what a nurse PhD should look like and and the University of Texas. No. No, that's not what we want. The excuse to look like, she's got to do her own research. She's going to invent all of this stuff for stuff. You got to figure out how to do all this and they simple nurses. Don't do the illogic research and your teeth said, what she does here. She doesn't graduate. So there was a tug of war for about 4 months, and I was so stressed out while they were deciding what

13:40 They were going to let me do this research. I ended up getting to do my very physiologic research, which was related to Hyperbaric medicine and it was great fun. I had a blast doing it. But if it took a little pushing up the Air Force and there was still a little prejudiced about. Why would we waste money on sending a nurse to get a PhD? And I have to say I'm not so sure that it did much for me. But okay. Anyway is my next question. So what did you do to get your PhD?

14:11 What were they thinking? I mean, what was the plan for when you graduated? What would be your role? And, you know, how would it contribute to the nurse Corps to the Air Force? I mean, obviously they thought it would because it wouldn't have paid for you to go there. But what would happen then while they didn't have a plan? When I came out, that is for sure. I apparently the chief nurse from around the country, were able to write an essay asking or telling command what they would do with a PhD and the Edsel, the best ass ate one. And I ended up at Wright-Patterson where I met you. I have no idea what they were thinking. I mean, honestly, they didn't think through that. So I spent the first two or three years after I got out doing a job that I had done many years before that, which I thought was ridiculous, but also trying to set up research spells around the Air Force like at Wilford Hall and some of the other bigger hospitals so that the people that could go behind me.

15:11 We could come out and sit in a research. Like I didn't ever get that opportunity. Because once I had gotten back in the hospital, I was in a command cracked and just did inanna. I just didn't get to go back to research except at the very end of my career, and I think the PHD probably helped get me promoted. Cuz I was a 1 of 1 at the time and I made it was the only person that had it. So it was kind of a freaky looking thing on there and I'm sure that help me get promoted, but it didn't do much for other things. I mean to didn't really help me with my leadership jobs. Or, you know, I was a commander at that didn't help with that. But in my very last job, my very last job. I was at the University of university health science center for military basically where they teach doctors nurses, Public Health people and it's mostly graduates.

16:11 Medical students graduate school for nurses. And during that I was teaching leadership and ethics and I was fortunate enough to work with the legendary Pat Banner. Who is that anybody that knows anything about nursing knows that she's kind of the guru of Nursing Research. She worked with us and we'd develop the study where we actually interviewed on 471 people for 90 minutes at a time. 399 nurses, from all of the different services and the VA and 72 Wounded Warrior. So this is what it really got. This is where I felt like I had finally contributed something to the wartime effort before that. I didn't feel very useful about that. But and I did I did pull from my stuff as a couple of the quotes because they were so interesting in their asses, don't tend to talk about things very well. And so it was for a while.

17:11 Time versus were never thought to have PTSD. And I said, well that's very interesting because nurses not only see them when they're deployed or when they're back at Landstuhl, take trying to get wake them up or when they're back home, rehabbing then they never get away from that. Trauma of all of those people just having those horrible injuries. And I have, that was really interesting and nurses didn't talk about it. So, when we did these interviews, we set them up with six people. And so, once one person started talking, then they all just would start crying and talking and I thought, oh, dear someday, we need to change some things here, cuz nobody's talking about this and they're going to be really stressed out when they get out. And I'm so here's some of the things they told me there was nice to you in person and long stool. And you understand that they they knocked these guys out downrange. When they're in the back.

18:11 Put him on a plane. They keep him knocked out the whole time. And the first time they wake up really is in Germany. And she says, I am the first thing they see when they wake up and when they look down and see that they have no legs. I am sure that my face is imprinted where his leg should be. I cannot get past it and it makes me sick. I'm going to leave the military. She couldn't she just says every time I looked where there was no legs. I just thought he looks at me. He looks down. He looks at me and forevermore. My face is going to be, where his leg should be. Just couldn't get over it. It was really interesting.

18:53 Is she in? And it was an ICU nurses Bagram. And she said sometimes ma'am. There are just no right answers. All the answers are wrong. And this is what happened. They have an explosion outside of the base and a whole bunch of Iraqi kids got injured and severely injured and needed vennilux. And so, of course, everybody feel bad. So they went up. Now I will tell you the military technically does not do that unless we are the ones that caused the injury, you know, we didn't nobody really knew. If it was just land, mines are what they got into. But anyway, we went out and got them came back and they said that it was about 15 of them on ventilators, in, in their ICU and it was quiet and they were thankful because they were able to take care of these kids. And then, all of a sudden there was a big battle and a bunch of our guys, got injured and needed the ventilators and they won.

19:53 I want had to take those little kids.

19:56 The ventilator and they said it was just horrifying to watch those kids died right in their arms. As she said, we sat there and he'll them and they died pretty quickly and even the ones that didn't work even worse because we ship them off the base and then they would be dead in nothing flat. You know it, she said it was awful. There wasn't never close. You had to take care of your guys. That's what the equipment was there for. So it was interesting. And then one more one of my friends. I'm actually one of the study with us has assigned to an expected 10th, which was unusual because usually it's the chaplains that are assigned in there, but she actually was in the expected and these guys are dying and it's just basically they have somebody there with you. So you're not dying alone, you know, and she was stroking the arm of this Soldier and just making sure that he knew she was there. And

20:56 And then he died. And so she takes the sheet off to prepare the body. And his arm is not attached to his body.

21:05 And she is just hysterical because she's been rubbing. This arm is just laying there and she wasn't comforting him at all. And that she said she was just had to pull herself together and she went back to work. But years later her father was dying and she found herself stroking his arm and all of a sudden she said I had a total breakdown all of a sudden I could smell the jet feel like it smelled the blood. I could see this arm dismembered from my dad's body and she said it triggered her PTSD.

21:44 She was a very brave nor she was the very first Act of dirty nurse that went on into the first inpatient PTSD unit that we had, and she learned ways to break that cycle by carrying a liquid lilac around her neck. And every time she smelled jet fuel blood, any of those things. She take the Lilac House and that would smell of the Lilac would break that cycle for her and she did deploy again after that. So that was really interesting.

22:18 I have it. I want to tell you. I would have won at least one about this one Wounded Warrior. He was a young marine and he had been hit by an IED when he was riding in his Humvee. And he said I was thrown from the Humvee really far and he thought I tried to get up, but I just could not get up. Is that never looking up at the sky and thinking cash is just a beautiful day too, but then I found my family and the chaplain who told us that whenever that happened just to start praying really loud. So somebody could find you. And then the medic found me and was obviously upset when he saw me cuz we were friends and I must have been in terrible shape. He told me to be quiet as the enemy was still shooting at us. He was holding an injection of morphine in his hand. He was going to give it to me for the page and his hands were just shaking violently. He had this shit that really quickly to grab.

23:18 What is God? Because an enemy soldier was coming at them shooting. And so, he grabbed his gun. The medic did shot this guy. And in the meantime, dropped the morphine syringe and it landed in the Medics leg. Not in. I'm in the soldier, Blake in the Medics place, and he said he was so upset about it, but he got so goofy, that the guys that I started to look and he said, I knew, right, then I was going to live because I could let and he said he, but the nurse ended up being a patient when they got back to lawn still. He said he visited me in the hospital all the time that he was feeling, so guilty that I didn't get my pain medication that day, but he said I told him over and over again that he actually saved my life, so,

24:08 It was a very interesting set of interviews. Guy said, I asked him. What was the worst? What was the biggest thing they were going to miss? And they said shooting guns and I thought how dare that doesn't translate to civilian life for a while. You know, we've got some real issues here. It was a very enlightening time in my life. I will tell you the stress just doesn't ever really go away. They just kind of move it around. I think we're very good at compartmentalizing things. There was one of our interviews that actually got picked up by the Huffington Huffington Post and I am going to tell you this, cuz I survived the war unscathed, physically, but not emotionally. The trauma of the war is not a curable condition that can be healed by therapy and drugs. Alone. PTSD is just a medical way of trying to describe a condition that isn't medical at all. Its spiritual.

25:08 What happens to the soldier who faces, the prospect of killing and maiming? Another human being is a spiritual trauma, the witnessing of wants partners and buddies. Being blown up is simply a life-changing, event, participating, and killing and maiming of innocent. People will never fully be cleared from your mind.

25:30 War leads, man, to healing, or understanding, or to a gun, or to a cliff.

25:37 Sadly, the memories never go away, nor the guilt or the horror, only ones relationship to it changes and ones response to it. And obviously, we've heard about the suicide rate was terrible and these are some of the reasons why this man was a psychologist that wrote this and he said, we are healers. And most folks can't fathom the told it that can take spending day after day after day in the blood and the screens and the death of our brothers and sisters. Is it is a I'll never forget that as long as I live. It was just one of those moments that I

26:21 I can't get out of my mind. I cried nearly almost every time I say it because his friend did commit suicide and they buried him at Arlington and when they were there, all of the units, stood there and they read the names on the Tombstones, all around their friend and said these, this is your new, this is your new group, you know, I don't know what exactly is a group or these are your new bodies that you're going to spend eternity with. And I thought it was just killing me. Some things just don't go when, you know, I mean, even when you're back home, I remember walking through wall to read, and there was a little tiny, girl, walking down the hall, and she was holding an artificial leg, and I do it. And she said, I'm holding my daddy, and of course, he's in a wheelchair next door with a wife. That looks like she's maybe 20 years old this little girls, probably 3. And I thought,

27:21 It's not normal. This is not normal, normal hearing this, you know, this. I don't know why that's so funny. When we stop people. With no arms, no legs. When guy everyday, his twenty-one-year-old wife would roll him into Walter Reed. He had no arms. No legs. Just a torso and Wi-Fi. How is that twenty-one-year-old woman going to take care of this man for the rest of her life, and I don't think we do a very good job of that.

27:53 So that's what my PhD did. For me is get diving deep into people's heads about what was going on. So I was grateful for that study for sure.

28:03 Or is it somewhere that we could see it? Or look at it read it?

28:12 The discovery itself.

28:16 Yeah, well, there's pieces of it out there. I can send that to you. There is I don't think there's any one story. We pulled it off and pieces to do different kinds of things. The whole group. It's never been put together as a story. It needs to be done. I've been told a million times, it yourself down, and put this together and write this thing because it's important. Thankfully for these kinds of stories. We can tell some of those stories here, but maybe this is the way to do it is on a videotape where I can just tell it, you know, that might be the way to do it, but, you know, career,

29:06 Tell me where ever time when you broke a rule or got in trouble during the years. I'll tell you that I thought the Air Force is about the easiest thing on the planet. I didn't understand how you could screw up at all. I just honestly didn't, it was so black and white to me and I was doing great and getting promoted early getting to go to school. I thought, you know, how can you mess this up? This is, this is pretty easy until I messed up and hear it, what happens?

29:41 PhD program. And I got an American Express card in the mail and it said, it was Tod or something. Some kind of a notation on it. You know, I don't know about you, but I do read all the rules on all those things, but it said something about for official Duty, or official use, you know, for the Air Force and I thought they must be sending me this so that I can buy books. And my, you know, if I have to wear uniforms again and now to go back, I thought that's what it was for. And I have lots of books to buy and I have a lot of research cost to do and I thought that's what it was being sent to me for. I really never did. And so I used it for all of those things paid it off. I never had an outstanding balance, which is, which was the bigger deal. Most of the time is, if you didn't pay it, you know what those guys are things happen, but it is a turned out. When I got to my next assignment which was at Wright-Patterson, I had

30:41 The briefing and they told us about the American Express card and it was supposed to only be for temporary Duty assignments. And so in my little group going self, as my mother would call me a goody two-shoes. I walked upstairs and reported myself for using it incorrectly.

31:08 I can still see the face of that person. I told. And they said, why in the world would you come up here and tell me that? I mean, what is it? Paid off? I said, yes, and they said we would have never known that. Why would you come up here and tell me that? Now, I've got to do something about it or it turns out it was a big, huge deal. And who knew it was such a big, huge deal, but it ended up that I was in a lot of trouble. A lot of girls and my commander had

31:39 It eventually gave me what it was called an Article 15, which is right below court-martial. I mean, absolutely a career killing thing. I was a major. I had just been picked up as Air Force nurse of the year. I think they canceled it, but it was over. I mean, there's just no way. I'm you can survive an Article 15 time. It's a bad thing is just crying and telling the kids for a mom, really messed up y'all. I'm probably going to get out of here forced. I really did a bad thing here. I guess I didn't know that that I did it anyway, so it became very apparent to me at that moment that you can get in trouble without even realizing it sometimes you didn't. I mean, there are things are blatantly obvious.

32:39 Some things are not and this was not and I am. So I got kind of militant about this but I'm I didn't put a whole package together, Pat went with me with over to the base commander still. The article 50. So I was stuck at Wright-Patterson for 5, which is a long time. I was there for five years and had to close down words and stuff because they don't let you move in as long as you have that. But I remember the attorney telling me that you may be the only person on the planet that will survive this nice and so he sent you here. I think you're going to be okay. And I went seriously doubt that and before I left Wright-Patterson, I actually got picked up for lieutenant colonel, which I think everybody in the building was shocked and they had called back from me for my keyboard, to find out what that Article 15 was for. Cuz they were like these two things don't match. Her record. Doesn't match. This just doesn't make any sense, but I did learn a lot from that. I got stuck there.

33:39 I had to figure out what I was going to do. I had to apologize to my family and I found that it wasn't as easy as I thought. And so, when I did become a commander, I was much better at it. I mean, seriously much better at it because I looked at all, sides of this. What's the backstory? What's the history of this person? There's no, there's usually something that's cause that. And so, I wasn't so black and white as a commander. I was pretty, you know, I mean, I really did sit down and spend a lot of time before I ever did any kind of punishment on people because I thought that turned out to be pretty unfair. But, whatever. I mean, I took my meat and I'll tell you, I think it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I thought it was unfair at the time, but I think now, it made me so much better. Otherwise, I would have always been pretty arrogant about it. Thinking, how can you get in trouble and then I didn't feel that way anymore. So that was my bad girl story.

34:36 Well, I think that's amazing that you know, just the journey went through and then how I talk to you actually feel better.

34:58 Okay, so I don't know who this is.

35:13 If you had a wonderful 30 or 4, but during that time, was there a time when you were totally disillusioned, when you were, you just at wasn't the Air Force, you thought it was, or anything like that?

35:33 There was always talk in the military that sexual assault was an issue. I had not run into it and then till I was a cat, my assignment right after my Ph.D program at the hyperbarics and it turned out that I was raped by the other officer in a very elaborate plan to get me into a place where I had no power. And it was awful. I mean, it was a terrible scenario and I couldn't believe that a friend of mine that I work with and yeah, we really worked well together had done this to me. Well, my husband unfortunately, you know, got involved and called him up and said come meet me and I thought I haven't, you know, this could be ugly. You know, he's going to kill him.

36:26 Time but it turns out he just told him, you know, if you don't stay away from my wife, you're going to be walking on your knees forever, but I'm going to tell you, I felt so helpless. When he came home. I was very mad at my husband because I couldn't handle that. I had to have my husband handle. It was awful and I was Furious about it. And then several years later. Even after that. Our daughter went off, to be a Cadet at the Air Force Academy and only about, well, she got there in June or July, and I'm just before Thanksgiving. She was sexually assaulted by an upperclassman, who lived next door to her, her roommates were gone because they were both basketball players. And so for that entire weekend, he kept her in her room. She had to pee in the sink in the stand at attention. And then she finally got out of the room on Sunday where she could call me. And she was hysterical and I she had loved the place till

37:26 Absolutely, love the place. And then all the sudden, she's hysterical, and she can't get out of there fast enough. They do make you stay. Unfortunately for it was almost two weeks before we could get her out of there, which was even worse, cuz she was terrified of the guy next door, but she wouldn't report. She would not talk about it. It took us months months, to get her to finally, fess up to what happened. I knew that knew we knew it. It happened because you just don't change like that. Without something dramatic happening. I knew what it happened, but we finally got her to talk. And then it was really horrible set of circumstances that forced me into doing things that I didn't want to do. One was, I went all the way up the chain of command at the Air Force Academy, trying to deal with this and nobody would listen. I mean, they just flat out with Melissa and I have one of the guys who are new really well, one of the generals look at me and said his his aide, who was the redheaded man.

38:26 You said, well, I went here and it didn't happen to me and she was very pretty and she said it was overdone happen to me. And then having anybody, it must have been her fault, which I was livid about and he just looked at me and said, you're going to have to get over it. And I said well, I know that's right. I could have happened. So since they refuse to do anything, I called the Denver news. And I knew screw came down and interviewed us and we were on the Nightly News at which point. Oh dear, you know, it was quite the news. The next morning. I remember walking in for breakfast in the cafeteria and everybody's looking at me this and either you're the bravest or the craziest person I've ever know it's different when it's your family and I will tell you, you will go to the wall to protect your family. We ended up on Oprah and 60 minutes and all kinds of different places and we have I have never been attacked like that in my life parents of Cadets called us. All kinds of names.

39:24 Over literally had to take down her chat line because there was so much hideous. Things being said about us. There were seven girls. All from the same class by the way, and so it was just me and it hasn't gotten a lot better. And when I got to Wilford Hall, I had to go every year and briefed about why sexual assault is still a mess in the military. And I don't know the answer to that. I don't know what else to call it. So that is still going on. I'm frustrated that we didn't get that fixed before we left but we didn't sell.

39:59 Epic. All I know about that. It was a long awful few years trying to deal with that. So well, it was it was a bad time in a wonderful 30 years. That's right. That's right.

40:15 I don't know if we're out of time. It's 48 minutes. Can we continue to talk Bella? Okay, I guess there's one, one more question, you know, obviously when you're in the Air Force for 30 years, you make a lot of

40:34 You know, close relationships, close friend, you work very closely with people under a lot of stress. Obviously. Can you tell me about some of those relationships that you had on the way last night? I was thinking that my very first Chief nurse in Tucson.

40:52 She was just as adorable little lady. She was so sweet. But she was really a tough little gas. And I came in with 10 years of nursing. I came in at 31 years old. So I was not a newbie. I wasn't brand new and I think Put Me In a Special Care unit. And so I started jerry-rigged and things cuz we didn't have a ventilator. Since the time I said, do we not own any in this house while they could get him out? So I jerry-rig in these things to work, like you do everything in the military. You learn how to jerry-rig everything but I'm so we were taking care of a lot sicker patients and then we got a new nurse manager that came up from the ER and she was very threatened apparently and wrote me this terrible review and I remember it. I was just shocked as I had worked my tail off and the chief nurse. Got it in her High hands. And she walked in.

41:50 Special Care unit in front of the nurse manager and me and ripped into about a hundred different pieces and said, I don't know, this is not happening. This is you're being vindictive. I really respected that she stuck up for me because some people wouldn't have, you know, some people wouldn't have

42:10 One commander who ended up being a horse who was my commander when I got to Wilford Hall in San Antonio. And he was just so smart. I learned so much from him. I did learn that. The way nurses. Think is it? How doctors or other people think? They'll? Cuz when I was trying to explain deployments, and why didn't have enough nurses to run this war? He goes, maybe they just doesn't make any sense to me. And so I had, you know, how to how to

42:50 And ask him, how can I put this into a graphic or something? That he understands and we did. And he goes, okay, so he but he was always on my side. He let me go. He let me go speak on sexual assault. We set up a sexual assault months. He let me change the rules so that people women did not have to report to a commander. They could report to downtown Saint nurse instead and those kinds of things really did. We thought we're going to help but it still didn't stop it from happening. Most people are pretty scared to file charges because it doesn't you know, it's it messes up a whole unit of people but that still needs. We need to get over that. And then the last month, interviewing me today because I met her after my Ph.D program at Wright-Patterson.

43:44 And we're probably as far off as it's as we could be. She's very calm, and she's very fast and throw everybody. Thought it was hysterical. That we sort of hit it off. And then she taught me how to be a chief nurse. I had no idea. I realized then that nurses do not get neither ship training in school. They really do not learn how to run hospitals, run Ward's. He kind of alert can wear it on the job, but she has, she taught me how to do it. And so, I was always going to her for everything, but during that, we became super good friends. And when I finally got out of jail, when I got not real jail, but what I called the jail in Ohio, she let me

44:35 Be her Deputy at the Air Force Academy. And it was hysterical, because everybody just thought, how can you two be friends or just total opposites, but we have some do their commander and sometimes my loud mouth was easier to go in there and yell at you.

44:52 And close doors.

44:54 I'm in a relationship. She's my friend to this day and I will always be thankful for her. And you know, I would have never met her without the military. I would I would not, I would do it all over again. Let's just put it that way. So.

45:12 All we got.