August was my on call month for deployment. Typically, August and September are high risk months for hurricanes. Early august was rather quiet, but a rarity popped up toward the end of August. A tropical storm formed in the Pacific Ocean, which eventually turned into a category 5 hurricane. Even more rare was the fact that it was headed directly for Hawaii.
I talked to Danielle one night, warning her that I could potentially get called to deploy. Of course, leaving the house last second for an unknown length of time is never enjoyable, however, we were expecting a baby at the end of September. This made a potential deployment even more undesirable since the baby could be born almost any day. (Regardless, a short deployment to a safe area is nothing compared to a deployment to a hazardous combat area lasting years)
Luck would have it, I received the call to deploy for two weeks. Instead of going to an incident command on Hawaii, I would be deployed to Washington DC to help augment roles within the Secretary of State's Operation Center (SOC).
I deployed a day after I was notified of the need. Unfortunately, pictures inside the SOC and discussion of what takes place is not allowed. As a high level summary of what took place, Hurricane Lane turned out to be less severe than originally planned. The category 5 hurricane quickly lessened in severity immediately before it hit Hawaii. It was dropped to a category 1 hurricane and then a tropical storm within a day's time.
As a result of the hurricane not impacting Hawaii as hard as originally thought, there was no need to keep augmentees in the SOC for too long. My deployment was cut short to only five days long. The majority of my deployment was spent in the SOC training, working my normal job from my hotel, and catching up on sleep.
The most interesting part of the trip was on my return flight home. We were sitting at the gate ready to depart and the gentleman in the row in front of me looked over to his traveling companion and said her name out loud. He said it again, and again, and again multiple times. By this time, I was curious what was going on. I looked over the seat to see this older lady looking back at him with a complete stare, unresponsive, absolutely still, and slightly drooling. The gentleman started looking for a call button and asking for help (he did not have a loud voice at all). I immediately caused a scene, yelling for help. I looked to the back of the plane yelling for medical assistance, then I looked to the front of the plane yelling for medical assistance.
The airplane attendees were very slow to respond. In fact, I looked right at one of them and they completely froze. Good thing a handful of nurses and physicians were on the flight and jumped right up to help. A couple minutes after a few of them arrived, the lady turned forward, and puked everywhere. She was conscious again, but looked weak.
The gentleman said she has a history of stroke, but the woman denied anything being wrong. By this time, the providers went back to their seats and EMT arrived. Since she was conscious, they tried to get her off the plane to better evaluate her. She refused, and said she was fine. Per protocol, the woman would have to leave the plane for a thorough evaluation and it now turned into making her leave. After a lot of convincing, she eventually left willingly.
It was a very interesting occurrence. I tend to think she had a silent seizure, but a small stroke could have been possible too. Regardless, she was getting the help she needed and hopefully will make a full recovery.
The plane was further delayed having to wait for maintenance to come and clean up the puke. After that, we were on our way home for an early morning arrival. BONUS - Danielle didn't have the baby yet!!!
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