The Circus Is Coming to Town

by Johnnie L. Gilpen Jr., MS, MHS, PA-C CAQ (EM) NRP

https://thewarhorse.org/the-circus-is-coming-to-town/

To read the article, please click on the link above.

On March 1, 2020, I started my emergency medicine fellowship. Looking back now, I could never have imagined—even in my worst nightmares—what the next three years had in store for the world, for America, for Oklahoma, for me, or for the ER, ICU, and EMS crews I served alongside.

This was the backdrop of my first reflection as a War Horse Journal Combat Medic and Corpsman Writing Fellow. The title came easily. Sometime during the second week of March, I showed up for shift and saw it: a blue-and-white tent had been erected in the parking lot. A circus tent. It was designated as our new triage area for patients with “flu-like symptoms.” To this day, I’m not even sure we ever used it—but the image stayed with me.

That piece became my origin story—how I went from a U.S. Navy Fleet Marine Force (FMF) Corpsman to a CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive) epidemiologist, then a paramedic, and eventually a PA-C in the ER. I didn’t realize at the time that every step of that path was training me for a disaster we didn’t yet understand.