Michelle Bowman, ARC/GNY Assistant Director of Training and Logistics, writes about her historic trip to Israel to work as an MDA Ambulance Responder.

Our hotel has been overrun Russians. Whenever we wake up and get downstairs at the appropriate hour, we try to take advantage of the hotel's fairly good breakfast selection.  However, one day we ran downstairs expecting to see our typical buffet line only to find about 40 Russians, including several Russian Orthodox priests in their full garb, occupying the buffet space. We tried to squeeze our way in, but to no avail. We grabbed a roll and ran outside in order to arrive on time.

The Russians stayed all week and proved to be fairly interesting. Several evenings we happened to observe them eating dinner in the hotel. Prior to eating, they all stood facing the same direction and sang a song that I assume relates to some sort of prayer. They all seem very devout, and we have taken more than one elevator ride squeezed between a stereotypical Russian babushka and a tall, thin Russian Orthodox priest with an enormous cross around his neck. In a country filled with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim history and traditions, it is rewarding to see that a full variety of religions are alive and active today.

I chose to relate this observation today, because not a lot happened on Monday. We arrived at the university hostel early in order to take our practical exam. Again, we had spent a lot of time studying, so we felt prepared and the exam went well. It felt great to finish our training, but this also meant that the "real work” was approaching very quickly.  In the afternoon we got to explore and practice working on a real MDA ambulance; suddenly the reality of the future seemed imminent.

The various participants in the program had varying opinions of this impending event. Most of us were looking forward to getting to apply our knowledge and embark upon our adventure. However, most of us were also somewhat nervous, especially now that we understood a little bit more about anatomy any physiology. We could very well be asked to hold a patient"s head, and we now know that turning a head of a trauma patient the wrong way can cause sudden death. A hole in someone’s chest could quickly lead to tension hemopneumothorax, a word we joked about, but a condition that we knew was deadly. Life and death would quickly be in our hands, and nobody was quite sure how we would react.  We were well trained and we could only hope for the best. Also, we had one more day of the program before we could actually start work.