Ep 67-In the Trenches with Marybeth: Keep Your Wits

A masked team storms the classroom, guns drawn, and within seconds everyone is zip tied, hooded, and ordered face-first to a wall. It’s “only” training, but your body doesn’t know that and Nurse Mary Beth Beseke proves how fast fear can wipe out logic.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Hello, Ally Cats. Welcome to our very first mini sode entitled In the Trenches with Mary Beth Basic. This episode contains some content that might not be suitable for all listeners, so be advised. A quick recap about Mary Beth if you missed last week's episode. Mary Beth is a top-notch trauma nurse with a history in social work. She has a woody and interesting voice that's easy to listen to. Although she broke up with him many years ago, she attributes her voice to years

Welcome And Content Advisory

SPEAKER_01 1:02

of friendship with her pal Joe Camill. Truly, her voice is reminiscent of Janice Joplin meets Betty Boop meets Marilyn Monroe. Mary Beth is a natural-born storyteller. This queen walks, nay, runs, to a fire instead of running away from it. And here's her story.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Hello, everyone. I want to share an event with you that taught me a lot about myself and about others. Let me give you a foundation for this experience. About eight years ago, I had a job that entailed a security clearance and some specific training in security clearance and potential safety situations. I was sent to a training camp of sorts for three weeks where I would be learning about policy, policy protocol outside the policy, demanding physical training and firearms training. In my training of three

Mary Beth’s Security Training Setup

SPEAKER_00 2:07

weeks, we were all instructed in hostage negotiations and management of hostage situations. For two weeks we were trained daily in the do and don't what to say and what not to say. There was no formal lecture of sorts about the do or don't of hostage negotiation, but rather a golden gem dropped from an instructor during lecture and class conversation. This three week program was pretty intense every day. On a given day, we would test out of tests like taking apart and putting back together a glock. Most of us had never held a gun, and looking back now, I think to myself I might not look good, but I can take apart about any gun and put it back together. It is a marvel about all those things backed into three weeks. The physical demands were all very intense, and for myself at that age it felt daunting. I had trained for years prior, kept myself at a certain weight, watched everything I ate, exercised daily for at least an hour, and often went back for an evening session of weights. When I got to the three weeks of training, every muscle that I had not addressed in the gym or weight bench was pushed to the limit. Training camp in the deep south with days so humid a butter knife could cut through it. Sweat covered our bodies stepping outside the cafeteria. We never caught a breeze, but rather the hot humid blast coming across the campus. Let me set the scene for you. For every exercise, seating chart, formation, and quiz I had, students were in alphabetical order. A guy to my left was the doppelganger for Michael from the blind side. This guy was kind, soft spoken, big as a tank, manners to make your mama weep. He grew up on the south side of Chicago and never said very much about his home, neighborhood, or even family. The guy to my right was the complete opposite. He never stopped talking, was a master of everything.

Meet Baker And Bunker

SPEAKER_00 4:53

He had done everything and was perfect at every task. Just ask him. Let me call the guy to my left Baker. And the guy to my right Bunker. Weeks of training were going by and each of us are learning crisis de escalation, conflict resolution. Every day is a skills training, a verbal judo to avert a crisis. Baker had a calm presence that entered the room before he did. Well, Bunker was quick, talk fast and listen later. I'm not sure of his previous life, but I knew he was the big talker, Betty Crocker of this group. Bunker was the escalator in our large group. Now we have a visual of the players. Take a breath. This is going to get interesting. We are in the middle of lecture when a dozen or so mass men storm our classroom with guns and order all of us to put our heads on the table and hands on our heads. We are zip tied and bags over our heads to obstruct our view. Then removed from the room and taken down a hallway to another room with walls, tables, one window. Every one of us is ordered to stand face first against a wall. This moment is very disorienting. It's hot. Our senses are

The Hostage Drill Begins

SPEAKER_00 6:36

not working and hypersensitive to fear. I am feeling completely disoriented. My buddy to the left is about five feet from me and radiating this calm. His breathing slow and measured. He is oozing this zen like quality. The guy to my right is all but hyperventilating, shuffling his feet in place while standing face first to the wall. The bunker is very much out of his element, and I believe some triggering is happening. The room is filled with this chaos. Many are having indistinct noises. Out of nothing, a person is behind me. His mouth is against my ear. I can smell his coffee breath mixed with cigar. He is not physically pushing me against the wall, but his presence is making me move away from him. Move away to where? I have nothing but wall ahead of me. This deep guttural voice starts telling me how he's going to shoot me or bury pieces of me in my backyard unless I tell him what he wants. In a flash, he switches

Threats Questions And Self Talk

SPEAKER_00 8:04

to you smell so good. How many children do you have? What's your husband's name? Where do you live? What's your mama's name? The questions come in rapid fire and quickly flip-flop between you smell so good. I could date you. To how many children do you have? What's your husband's name? My head is on fire, swirling, twirling in anxiety. What is happening to me? What is happening to everyone else? Who are these people? Are they going to hurt me? Why is this happening? Every ounce of logic has left me and all that remains is emotion, anxiety, and disorientation. These moments seem like I am the only person in the room with only chatter around me. At this moment, I stop my brain from visiting the old familiar fear and hear myself say, Snap out of it. Stop being stupid.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Now it's time for a chart note. Here's a warning for all from an ER nurse who says this is the best description of a woman having a heart attack that she's ever heard. So please read the transcript in our show notes and pay attention and share. This is about female heart attacks. She says, quote, I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I can give. Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have. You know, the sudden stabbing in the chest, the cold sweat, the grabbing the chest and dropping to the floor that we see in the movies. Here's a story of one woman's experience with a heart

Warning Signs Of Women’s Heart Attacks

SPEAKER_01 10:13

attack. She says, I had a heart attack at about 10:30 p.m. with no prior exertion, no prior emotional trauma that one would expect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly and warm on a cold evening with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story that my friend had sent me and actually thinking, ha ha, this is the life. All cozy and warm in my soft, cushy lazy boy with my feet propped up. A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion, and it's so uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast, and you should have chewed it more thoroughly. And this time you drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down the stomach. That was my initial sensation. The only trouble was I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5 o'clock PM. After the sensations seemed to subside, the next one was like squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my spine. Hindsight, it was probably my aorta spasms, gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum, which is the breastbone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CBR. This fascinating process continued on and into my throat and branched out into both jaws. Aha. Now I stopped puzzling about what was happening, because we've all read or heard about the pain in the jaw being one of the signals of a myocardial infarction, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack. I lowered the footrest, dumping the cat from my lap, and started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, if this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else. But on the other hand, if I don't, who will? No one will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer, I might not be able to get up into in a moment. I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair and I walked slowly into the next room and dialed the paramedics. I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under my sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid. I was just I was just stating the facts. She said she was sending the paramedics over immediately and asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, I should unbolt the door and lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in. I unlocked the door and I laid down on the floor as instructed and eventually lost consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney, or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call that they made to St. Jude emergency room on the way. But I did briefly awaken when we arrived, and I saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over, asking me questions, probably something like, Have you had any medication? But I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying or form an answer. And so I nodded off again, not waking up until the cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my ephemeral artery into the aorta and into my heart, where they installed two side-by-side stents to hold open my right coronary artery. I know. It sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it was probably four to five minutes before the call. And both the fire station and St. Jude are only minutes away from my home. And my cardiologist was already ready to go to the OR and his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart, which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure. And then he went about installing the stents. Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned firsthand. Number one, be aware that something very different is happening in your body. Not the usual men's symptoms, but inexplicable things, like when my sternum and jaws got into the act. It's said that many more women than men die of their first and only myocardial infarction because they didn't know they were having a heart attack. And commonly they mistake it as indigestion. Take more mallocks or anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up, which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine. So I advise you to call the paramedics if anything is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It's better to have a false alarm visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be. Number two, note that I said call the paramedics. And if you can, take an aspirin. Ladies, time is of the essence. Do not try to drive yourself to the ER. You're a hazard to others on the road. Do not have your panicked husband who'll be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road drive you. And do not call your doctor. Your doctor doesn't know where you live. And if it's at night, you won't get it, you aren't going to reach him anyway. And if it's in the daytime, his assistants or answering service will tell you to call the paramedics. Your doctor doesn't carry the equipment in this car that you need in order to be saved. The paramedics do. Principally, they carry the oxygen that you need, ASAP. Your doctor will be notified later. And number three, don't assume that it couldn't be a heart attack because you've normal cholesterol. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of a heart attack, unless it's unbelievably high and or accompanied by high blood pressure. Heart attacks are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance that we can survive. A cardiologist says if everyone who sees this or listens to this message could share or repost this, you can be sure that we'll save at least one life. And now back to the story.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I tell them I have no children. I have no husband. My parents are deceased. I live on bass. Once I find my rhythm, the white noise around me leaves, and I hear other voices around me. The guy to my left is calm and collected with his unrated answers and radiating strength. The guy to my right started out fine, and then I hear his voice quake. He is slowly losing it. They're shuffling by bunker.

Back To The Wall With A Plan

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Just then I hear the two women from my group begged the mass men to not harm their children. We are all hundreds of miles from home, and these guys could not know our children. The two women are starting to cry and ultimately removed. The more the intensity of the men in our ears grows, the more the guy to my right is cracking up and ultimately starts to talk in between tears. This exercise goes on for what seems like hours. The building is hot with no airflow. One by one I hear voices leave down a hallway, and when it feels like no one is talking, a deep voice says, Ladies and gentlemen, your exercise is over. You can step back from the wall while the men remove the hoods and zip ties. After being under a hood for so long, my eyes are squinting in the bright light of the shades that are now open. I look around the room, there is only the guy to my left and a couple of other people left from the group. The guy to my right is gone. We would not see him until the end of the day. The big group is escorted back to the classroom, and once again I am left wondering how did this just happen? The big group is back together with the people in the classroom in stages of tears or obvious anxiety. My brain keeps twirling around how fast I fell into this absurdness. We are in a training program. We could not possibly be taken hostage for real. This all must be a joke, a test the training program. The older deep voice man walks in the room followed by a dozen or so men who were wearing masks earlier. As those men introduce themselves, they are all men who are retired or still working with hostages, trained would-be hostages and federal agents. They do a quick brief on why some people were pulled from the group and why some people were left behind. We were informed that as we were tested out for our hostage skills, some forgot the skills to keep themselves alive. Those students

Debrief Who Made It Through

SPEAKER_00 20:56

were pulled from the exercise. Those left were the ones who implemented the skills they were taught. I remember thinking as the low whisper of voices talked about the big surprise test that happened to every class, and a large part of our past fail depended on how we performed. It all sounds crazy, but I had moments when the Duke situation came back to me. Like a little bird in my ear, I heard the little whispers of wisdom that kept me alive. There are so many points to take away from this exercise. Baker, who was to my left, was unwavering and quiet. Later he would tell me when I asked how he stayed so calm. My neighborhood could be this in real life. Baker didn't live in a war zone, but even I understood that forgetting to be more than Mindful in the wrong neighborhood could land a person in a very tense situation. I felt like Baker brought his real life experience to this exercise. Bunker, on the other hand, must have been triggered in a way that none of us will ever really know. We were never told what really happened to him when he was removed from the hostage situation. For two weeks each and every one of the students were given the nuggets to survive the situation if we were able to file it away for the right moment. Takeaway number one Say nothing and think. Your brain is your strongest weapon. We can't do two things at a time when we are disoriented by a bag over our heads and hands tied. Use the quiet to listen for information. What are the others talking about? Who is still with you? Takeaway number two. You're tempted to talk and bargain with a person, but don't do it. Research tells us that the best courses do not give information. Remember in the Duke

Survival Rules Say Less Think More

SPEAKER_00 23:21

situation, I lost it. I was mentally grabbing at straws. I did have a slight script, but not effective. My resources are best used to stay calm and be mindful. Takeaway number three never judge the book by the cover. We may lay odds that the big talker will save us. The best educated will think of something. Your brain is your best defense. Remember Baker, he has spent a lifetime practicing the art of being mindful. Number four, don't talk, don't negotiate, hold back your tears, take your mind to another place. If you're in a situation where your safety is at risk, falling to pieces only means that the bad guy just got to you. The takeaway from this lesson and all things, keep your wits about you. Have a conversation with yourself. Never give out information to a stranger. No matter how scared you may be, your brain is your best weapon, and you can do anything to attack yourself into your agent 007.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

And yet again, we have an incredible story from Nurse Mary Beth. I'm so appreciative of her sharing her experiences and her lessons. And wow, that was just mind-blowing and just a message to all of us. The power of our ability to rely on what we've learned, to react with common sense, and prevail in the end. So thank you, Mary Beth. Now it's time for our medical mishap. This email comes from a listener who says, Hi, Jenna and Amanda. I love your podcast. And listening to your episode guides me through my commute and whenever I can snatch some quote unquote me time at work. I work in physical therapy, and years ago we had a patient come in after knee surgery. He was a nice guy, mid-sixties, very eager to get back on his feet. At his first appointment, I asked which knee had been operated on, and he pointed to his right knee. The surgical scar was clearly on the left. I figured he was just confused from his pain medication, so I gently corrected him.

Medical Mishap The Mystery Knee

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Oh no, your surgery was on the left knee. He looked at me like I was the crazy one. He said, No, it was definitely the right one. Back and forth we went for a solid minute, and finally he pulled up the leg of his shorts and pointed to the giant scar on his left knee. That's from the surgery three years ago. Then he pointed to the right knee. This is the one they just fixed. The problem? The surgeon had used the exact same incision location and scars looked nearly identical. The patient honestly couldn't remember which knee had been done which year. To settle the debate, we pulled up the op report. And it turns out he was right. The new surgery was on the right knee. The entire therapy department had spent 10 minutes confidently arguing with a man about his own legs. For the rest of his rehab, every time he came in, he'd grinned and asked, You guys know which knee we're working on today, right? And honestly, we checked every single time. Thank you for reading this if you do, and keep on giving us great content. I look forward to it every Friday. Yours in suspicion, Jay. Healthcare professionals spend a lot of time verifying information, and stories like this are exactly why. Even when everyone is acting in good faith, assumptions can sneak in. A scar doesn't always tell the whole story. A chart can be incomplete, and sometimes the patient remembers something important that nobody else does. So fortunately, this story ended with nothing more serious than a bruised ego for the therapy team and a running joke that lasted the rest of his recovery appointments. So this one feels authentic, lighthearted, and relatable. So thank you, Jay. Next week, we will cover an episode about a medical cult. You don't want to miss this, Alley Katz. But meanwhile, don't miss a beat. Subscribe or follow Doctoring the Truth wherever you enjoy your podcasts for stories that shock, intrigue, and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You can text us directly on our website at doctoringthetruth at buzzsprout.com or email us your story ideas, your medical mishaps, and your comments at Doctoringthe Truth at Gmail. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Doctoring the Truth Podcast and Facebook at Doctoring the Truth. We're also on TikTok at Doctoring the Truth and ed oddpod e d aud. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can be sure to bring you more content next week. Until

Subscribe Share And Stay Suspicious

SPEAKER_01 28:42

then, stay safe and stay suspicious. Goodbye.