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Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another episode of Soft Rep Radio. I am your host, Rad. And today I have a very special guest, but first before I introduce him, I need to remind you to go check out our book club. Okay, software.com forward slash book hyphen club or similar.

Pick up the book club for software.com. You like to read. You like to get those books. We'll send them out to you. We got thousands of books in our library. And I also got to say, you know, I am wearing a software shirt. And so you can get the merch at software.com support us. So we can keep bringing on guests like former Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lorraine United States Air Force combat nurse who served 22 years deployed about nine times Jim. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Red. Good to talk to you. I'm glad that you guys.

I would like to be on here. We're going to talk to you about caregiving and what it's like to be a caregiver in today's veterans system VA. I've recently had the former deputy commander of the VA on and we talked about the long hallways and caregivers who are getting older because the younger veterans don't dare go into the hospital who can navigate the hallways at a younger age. And now you have caregivers. You could correct me. Like, you know, watching my mom take care of my dad. Right. He was the green beret. He was the marathon runner.

My mom was the mom and took care of us. She turned into that green beret marathon runner pushing him and wheeling him and escorting him and the whole nine yards. And I know this episode is going to be talking about caregiving. And I know you're a caregiver. Again, welcome to the show. So what do you think?

No, I agree. Who is the deputy? Oh, geez. Major general. Excuse me. Awesome guy. Dude, surfer, dude. Let me think he's going to be teaching surfing for recreational therapy because he had an eye. And we agreed that no matter your rating, you should be able to get like a, you know, recreational therapy prescription versus like, here's a bunch of pills first pharmaceuticals, if you will. And so, oh, man, you're calling me on the spot. I'll find his name and just a minute. I'm just curious.

No, it was just just talk to him the other day. Oh, geez. I'll find it. But again, no problem. Again, this, this episode is about caregivers. And, you know, prior to you becoming this quote unquote caregiver, you were in high school, right?

That was a nice goal. Graduated. You know, I fortunately made it out of out of high school. My mother, I graduated at a time where unemployment rates were through the roof. My family are all nurses. She said, you're going to be a nurse. You can always get a job here. That's what you need to go to school for. So I did. I graduated from Syracuse University as a nurse and then had always wanted to go into the military, joined the reserves two years into the into my college.

In a medical unit and then graduated with my nursing degree and then went active duty. And then I was, you know, all my, my sites were set set on being a flight nurse. And so I did four years in Keesler, for space and a galaxy in a medical center.

And then went into air medical evacuation flew all over Europe, all over Africa, the Middle East, flying air medical evacuation, ended up in desert shield storm for that period of time and then up and provide comfort.

And then left that unit and then went to another air medical unit at Pope Air Force Base. And at Pope, we went to I spent some time in Haiti. I spent some time in South America, South and Central America, mostly.

And then ended up in Mogadishu. And then Mogadishu spent a lot of time there. What year was that roughly in Mogadishu?

Mogadishu was the winner of in December of 92. And then I left in 93. And then from that experience and from that time there, special operations needed.

People that knew long range air medical evacuation and were comfortable with it, which, which I was, I went. So I got assigned to as an augment to JSOC went on from there.

And I got it and I did tours at air mobility command running the air medical evacuation program. And then I had a great gig at the Pentagon of the joint staff. I was a fellow to the chairman.

And then I went right back into SOKOM. So in 2000, September of 2000, I ended up at United States special operations command down at Tampa. And I'll never forget General Skuhmacher was the commander and he got everyone, everyone he was new said, Hey, this is an opportunity to take a knee, stay, you know, do things with your family.

Catch a breath because once you get done with this tour, you're going to go back into the back into being active in the special operations community. Anyways, long story short, no, that ended on September 11, 2001, as we were sitting in the operation center, watching the plants at the towers and the Pentagon.

That afternoon, we went from SOKOM. I went over to succinct and started the planning for what would be operation and during freedom. I retired out of SOKOM. I did, during all those times, I did, I did tours and augment T tours into Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, talking about Afghanistan, I have to just divert when I was at a salon classified now, but back then it was classified.

What a lot of people don't know is, you know, you know, the movie Charlie Wilson's War. Sure. Yeah. So there was a humanitarian side of it. The humanitarian side was, and this, by the way, Red will connect back to 9-11, the humanitarian side was that the Americans were bringing out the wounded Mujahideen and their kids at the time in the late 80s, late 80s, after 87.

The Russians were using booby traps that would, they looked like toys and candy and things and the kids were picking them up and they were losing their hands and they were losing their eyesight.

Small little wounds that just caused massive, you know, just gross against Geneva Convention style objects, right? Like being children. Yeah. Right. Let's just be clear. Yeah. No, it was targeted towards kids. And so these kids, what we would do is we'd evacuate them out of Afghanistan and bring them back to Europe and they'd go to some European hospitals.

But most of them would go back to the United States and go to great hospitals like Walter Reed, Bethesda, and out to Fort Sam, and out to Brook Army Medical Center. And then other other places. Yeah. All that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, what happened was so they would spend months in the United States. And then they would go back. We, you know, they had to all had to go back to the back to Afghanistan. They went back. Things all changed.

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