CDR Jennifer Bornemann

CDR Jennifer L. Bornemann

Q: This is Sam Robson, here today with Jennifer Bornemann. Today's date is February 24th, 2017, and we're in the audio recording studio at CDC's [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Roybal Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm interviewing Ms. Bornemann as part of the CDC Ebola Response Oral History Project. And I hope I'm not drastically mispronouncing your last name, [laughs] because I'm about to say it for the third time--Ms. Bornemann?

BORNEMANN: Commander Bornemann if you like, just to distinguish between civilian and PHS [US Public Health Service] if you want. So, Commander Bornemann--

Q: Commander Bornemann, I appreciate that.

BORNEMANN: Although I do prefer Jen, but-- [laughs]

Q: Okay, Jen. [laughter] We'll go with Jen. But thanks for being here. For the record, would you mind going ahead and stating your full name and your current position with CDC and PHS?

BORNEMANN: Sure. My name is Commander Jennifer Lynn Bornemann. I am a licensed clinical social worker. I'm a health services officer with the United States Public Health Service Commission Corps here at CDC, which I am quite new to. I 00:01:00am a program manager with the Deployment Risk Mitigation Unit.

Q: Thank you very much. If you were to give someone a little, two-to-three-sentence description of what your role was in the Ebola response, what would you tell them?

BORNEMANN: Sure. I have to always say it was the greatest honor of my life, so I couch it with that. I served as a behavioral health officer with the Monrovia Medical Unit Team Two, and I performed many duties, but primarily the force health protection piece for my team, as well as doffing procedures, which I'm sure we'll get into later through the interview.

Q: Thank you. Backing up a bit, would you mind telling me when and where you were born?

BORNEMANN: Sure. I was born actually not too far from here, Riverdale, Georgia. 00:02:00My dad was enlisted at Fort McPherson, and so that's why we were down here, and that was December 5th, 1972.

Q: So your dad was in the military. Did that mean that you moved around a little bit as you were growing up?

BORNEMANN: We did. People ask if I'm from here, which is so funny because I was born here but I never lived here beyond those first six months. We lived in Florida and then we lived in New Orleans, where my dad received his master's degree at Tulane [University]. Then he commissioned in the United States Public Health Service and was assigned to San Francisco, one of the former PHS hospitals. We lived there Kindergarten through third grade. Then we moved cross-country to northern Virginia and then Annapolis, Maryland, for high school.

Q: Okay, high school, Annapolis, Maryland. What kinds of things were you 00:03:00interested in, in high school?

BORNEMANN: Who's going to hear this, potentially? [laughter] Certainly athletics, always a big part of my life. I played basketball and tennis. And hanging out with my friends. I had the coolest first job at fourteen at Riordan's Saloon, and so I just had fun with friends and sports. That really hasn't changed. [laughs] Sports and friends and family.

Q: Which sports?

BORNEMANN: Oh, all. I'm a huge jock. But I'm a tri-athlete now and marathoner and all that stuff.

Q: Did you know what you wanted for your future, or have an idea back then?

BORNEMANN: High school? High school was I think surviving day-to-day. I wasn't the best student. I'm not your most book-smart, unlike a lot of folks here at 00:04:00CDC, but I am the one you're going to want in a fight right next to you or navigating some unfamiliar territory. I wasn't sure what my path was going to look like, and I'm really glad actually because after high school I went to college and kind of partied. Mom and Dad said, we're not going to pay for you to party, which was one of the greatest decisions. So I paid my own way, so I had to take a little longer. When I finally got my bachelor's [degree] in six years instead of four, I immediately got a job on Capitol Hill. Those are very hard to get, so I was thrilled. I was working in the personal office of an amazing congressman by the name of Porter [J.] Goss. Then moved to New York City, and I 00:05:00went to Columbia University School of Social Work. That did come about on the opening day of baseball season. My dad and I sitting together at an Irish bar that's no longer there on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He said, "Have you thought about social work again by any chance?" "Well, kind of. I don't know," and, "Is that--you know, I'll apply." For this kid who almost failed out of undergrad to get into an Ivy League institution, I was thrilled, amazed, very proud. I was going to take advantage, and I did, and I loved that program. I guess this wasn't really your question, but then I went on. I worked in a couple 00:06:00of program areas, but then I ended up on Wall Street where I worked for Credit Suisse First Boston, which became Credit Suisse, in corporate philanthropy, where I actually used my social work skills every day.

Q: How do you use your social work skills on Wall Street?

BORNEMANN: In corporate philanthropy--well, let me back up. What we learned on the very first day of social work school is you have to get to where the client is. That serves you well in any situation. Know your audience. All of that. I really took that with me. Also, you learn in Foundations of Social Work that the way we approach working with individuals or groups is that you look at them within their environment. So I would approach meetings with our nonprofits that 00:07:00we supported financially and said, hey, how can we best support you? Instead of us going to them saying we're giving you the money so we want you to do this, I learned from them within their environment as to how we could best help them meet their needs. That's how you add value. Just repainting a wall, that doesn't get you very far. But if you have a real need that will impact the most amount of clients of any particular nonprofit or community, whatever, much rather do that. It's a much more fulfilling exercise. Likewise, on the bank side, the internal side, I would meet with senior leadership and say, what do you need? Who needs leadership development? Who needs communication skill improvement? All 00:08:00these different areas, and then would work with the nonprofits based on their needs and match them and find ways to make real, true impact. You didn't have to be a social worker to do that job, but I definitely used a lot of what I learned in my day-to-day.

Q: It sounds like it. What were one or two of the nonprofits that you worked with and learned about?

BORNEMANN: My favorite event of every year was with the Henry Street Settlement. I don't know if you're familiar with them, Lower East Side. They were one of the big Lower East Side settlement houses. We threw a Christmas party every year for their--they had two shelters co-located. It was for women and their children 00:09:00affected by domestic violence, and a homeless shelter. We would work with the staff and, again, what do the kids want? We would get huge response in terms of volunteers, and we would show up and the Henry Street staff would have the youth out there singing Christmas carols as our bus rolled up, and then we just worked our tails off. We had a Santa, we did Santa pictures, we created crafts, we made cookies. It ran the gamut. We decorated, which was a nice--and we did it together. We did it with the residents and the youth. That partnership with Henry Street Settlement was very important to me. Also, and this is a large nonprofit, but the American Red Cross, we provided them with the largest 00:10:00corporate team who is trained in their greatest need, which is sheltering. If, God forbid, something were to happen, people need places to live, eat, shower, all that stuff, and so that's their greatest need. We had managing directors, very senior-level folks to middle managers to junior folks. We had over three hundred employees trained to shelter in the case of an emergency that the Red Cross was involved in. That was something that was very important to me because most people don't look at an investment bank and think you have a lot of people trained to serve people food and other of those types of activities, but we did. 00:11:00It was a culture of giving back and one I was incredibly proud to be a part of.

Q: How long were you doing that kind of work?

BORNEMANN: I think I was there for seven years.

Q: Until like when?

BORNEMANN: Until 2010, March 1, 2010. Less than a week from now will be my seven-year anniversary of commissioning in the United States Public Health Service. I just decided to shift gears. I had been in New York City for twelve years, and as much as I love that town, I needed a little break. You're probably familiar.

Q: I did love it.

BORNEMANN: Yeah. But it's tough. "If you can make it there," you know. I wanted to get back to my social work roots. My dad having retired as a United States Public Health Service officer got me thinking about serving my country in uniform, so I did. I commissioned and moved down to Maryland. I was with the 00:12:00Department of Defense for a few years, then Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for the past two years, and then I just joined CDC here in Atlanta in December.

Q: What did your dad do with PHS?

BORNEMANN: I humbly say this. The apple doesn't fall too far. He was actually a health services officer. He commissioned as a social worker. He went on and got his PhD--or EdD [doctorate of education] I should say--in counseling psych [psychology]. He worked on a number of things, but the two takeaways for me were he worked on the Cuban-Haitian refugee program--so when a lot of folks were running away from that, he and a couple of his buddies, who are now mentors of 00:13:00mine, they ran to the issue and they provided a great deal of care and services for folks who were mentally ill and in refugee status. And two, at the end of his Public Health Service career, he worked on the Surgeon General's report on mental health. I'm incredibly proud of his efforts there. Then he went on to WHO [World Health Organization] and worked on the global report on mental health.

Q: Were there ever any ways that he inspired your own work as a social worker?

BORNEMANN: Growing up, he had a private practice--well, he did direct practice 00:14:00in San Francisco. But then, moving back to the East Coast when I remember more clearly what he did, he was in the policy world, and he did have a private practice on the side for a bit. But just how my dad always cared about others and how he--both my parents. I never saw differences in people and that everyone matters regardless of whether they're healthy or mentally ill. Everyone deserves to be listened to and respected. So I guess not directly in a clinical way but in a way to view the world around me, he certainly has been a tremendous 00:15:00influence on me.

Q: Do you remember what project you were working on when the Ebola epidemic started heating up?

BORNEMANN: I was at SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] working on youth suicide prevention efforts. I probably looked at it like a lot of Americans. Very concerned. Very concerned about what that meant for us in the US. Also, from a public health perspective, how are we going to be involved in this? How can we help? I'm a very proud American who also 00:16:00believes in being responsible to our world, and I don't want to see anyone suffering. There is way too much of that. So I kept an eye on it. I was actually very familiar with Liberia because my dad was the mental health director at the Carter Center, and they actually had a Liberia program.

Dad went over there, and I was very nervous. I'll never forget. We were nervous when he went to Liberia before Ebola, but then after--and then we heard some rumblings that we might be able to help. We, being the Public Health Service. They sent out a questionnaire to check availability and willingness, I guess, 00:17:00and of course I wanted to go. If there was going to be an opportunity, I wanted to be a part of it and I wanted to help in whatever way I could in my very miniscule way. But like my dad, I like to run to the fire as opposed to away from.

We filled out the survey and it was sort of like, oh wow, okay, glad to hear we're getting involved and, who knows, maybe I'll end up in Africa. Never been to Africa. Why not? Then the communication was kind of vague, purposely vague I think. I just kept reading emails as they came in, "You've been identified, if 00:18:00your supervisor approves and agency approves." Luckily, at SAMHSA, our administrator at the time, Pamela Hyde, was very supportive of HHS [US Department of Health and Human Services] and Public Health Service efforts in fighting Ebola. She made sure that the SAMHSA officers that were tapped were able to go. With my supervisor's blessing, I let them know I'd like to continue moving forward. Of course, then we had a lot of training we had to do in a short amount of time, medical visits, immunizations, all that. And we still didn't know if we were going.

I happened to run a lot of races that fall. This was the fall of 2014. I got the 00:19:00first notice--I was like, wow, I might be doing this--two nights before I ran the New York City Marathon. I was afraid to tell anybody because I didn't want people to get upset or worried or concerned. I just had it with me and I remember running the race thinking about it the entire time, what does this mean? Am I going to die? All of these questions. But it always ended up with this, "I'm very proud to have the opportunity to serve." Then two weeks after that, I ran the Richmond Marathon, and it was even closer and I was like, I'm going. I'm going to Africa. It's just a matter of when. We didn't have full 00:20:00confirmation until we actually received our flights, which was like two days before we left for training. But when I got my email, it was the day before my birthday that I would be leaving. My birthday is December 5th, and our orders were to travel on December 4th to Anniston, Alabama, for a week of training, and then on to Liberia. It was one of those things we're like, oh, we don't know, and then it was like, boom, go time.

I went knowing a couple of people on my team but no one very well. None of my closest friends in the corps or anything. Basically, it was like seventy-five strangers who I was going on this scary yet important adventure with.

Q: You mentioned that you hadn't told anybody about it as you were going through the process. When did you let everyone know that this was something?

BORNEMANN: I let everyone know--well, "everyone" being my parents and my siblings, and I was married at the time, my wife--between the New York City Marathon and the Richmond Marathon. Just sort of, hey, this is what it's looking like. And of course my supervisor, I was always in touch with him about it. Even then, I asked people not really to talk about it. Of course, there was a lot of stigma. I didn't want folks to feel like they had an opinion as to whether or not I went because they didn't. There was a fire and I was going to it. That was 00:22:00the hard part. I'm the one going out there. My family were back here worried. I felt bad about that in some sense because I'm very lucky--I have two amazing sisters. One is a twin and one is ten years younger. My sister who's ten years younger was about to have her second baby that I was supposed to be there at the birth for, and I knew I was going to miss it. And I have, as I've mentioned, incredible parents and extended family, but my core family, we're incredibly close. As worried as they were though, they know me and they knew I would go. 00:23:00But that was very hard. It was very hard really to miss the birth of my youngest niece, Annie. But somehow I got through to my sister, it was my first full day in Africa that she was born. And Sarah, my younger sister, said that's the only time she cried was connecting with me on the day of Annie's birth.

Q: So you go to Anniston with all of these strangers.

BORNEMANN: All these strangers. All these strangers. It's almost surreal as I look back. We recently had our two-year anniversary of returning home earlier this month, and in looking at the pictures and the reminders, in some ways it 00:24:00seems like a million years ago and in some ways it seems like yesterday. Anniston is such a blur in so many ways. I feel like I was a child then. The highlight for me of Anniston was because of my dad's familiarity with the country of Liberia, his passion for the country and its people, his knowledge of the current state there and, of course, his service as a corps officer himself, I asked for him to come and give sort of the cultural awareness piece. He drove down to Anniston and gave us a brief on Liberia, and he got to meet some of my brand-new friends. I felt very lucky to have had that opportunity. I wish other 00:25:00teams were able to hear him, because again, his passion and his knowledge around the country. But for me, I got that extra squeeze before I left.

Q: Were there some important messages of cultural sensitivity and understanding what it's like to live in Liberia that you felt were especially important that you brought with you?

BORNEMANN: Yes, very important, and ones that I was aware of, but I was worried about others. Not necessarily our group but just in general. I worry that a lot of people tend to think of Africa as a "land of savages," and I think in very 00:26:00narrow viewpoints it's "why do we care about a bunch of savages," if you will. That saddens me to my core because they are human beings just like each and every one of us and they happen to not have the resources that we have, and people were getting very, very sick. What my dad brought to it was certainly the sense of humanity. Even besides the savagery reputation, misinformation, that I think some people have, it also should be noted that Liberia had recently in the past thirty years been through two civil wars. That's pretty scary stuff. 00:27:00There's a lot of security concerns there. Based on those headline-type areas, people could assume one way about Liberia and its people. But the reality is they're actually very warm, they're very loving. For a culture that is like that, and they have a special handshake when they greet each other, to not be able to touch was huge and certainly worth noting, so that when we did enter, we had that awareness of the importance of physical human interaction to the people of Liberia. Of course, that's a generalization, but that's just in terms of the 00:28:00cultural piece. That was something, again, that humanity piece that I'm so grateful my dad certainly brought to me but also to our entire team before we left.

Q: Were there other parts of Anniston that you found particularly helpful for preparation? Going in?

BORNEMANN: Sure. I think we had the look of having a tremendous training cadre of I think primarily CDC folks. The woman who sticks out the most for me is Captain Holly Williams, who is here at CDC. I did not know her at all, but I was 00:29:00struck by her leadership ability, her presence, her passion, her wanting to make sure that we understood how important this mission was and that the ultimate mission was us getting home safely, and her conveyance of that message. She really struck me, and I'm very pleased to say that we are now friends. She actually had me over at Christmastime. She was definitely a very powerful piece of that training component, and I always felt comforted by her. Again, we didn't talk till well after I got back, but I was always very comforted by knowing that 00:30:00she cared about us. It was an interesting dynamic. That, I was truly grateful for. We had the then-Acting Assistant Secretary for Health come down to see us, and that was great. I was a big fan of hers. Really, I think it was a great opportunity for us to bond. Like I said, I spent my birthday there. That was our first full day in Anniston, and I started it with a five o'clock in the morning run with my mentor, Robin Lewis, and a nurse who I had just met on the run named Megan who is an amazing NIH [National Institutes of Health] nurse. Then the whole room sang Happy Birthday to me at one point during the day. It was 00:31:00certainly a birthday I will never forget. Yeah, so it was a good opportunity for that.

Q: How did things proceed after Anniston?

BORNEMANN: After Anniston, we load up and we head out. Very thankfully, we were on a chartered flight, direct flight, so I will not complain about the transportation. We were chartered there and chartered back, so we were very lucky in that sense where we had space. It was just us. One thing I'll never forget, and others will--I'm sure--laugh if they were to ever hear this, is we would--the entertainment was the movie Argo in Spanish over and over and over. 00:32:00My TV [television] in particular--it could have been others--but it was all fuzzy, and I couldn't seem to turn it off. So Argo in Spanish always makes me giggle.

It was the furthest I had traveled. I've been to Europe, but that was the furthest I had traveled, and I was going someplace I never thought I'd go. Really to the great unknown. It was surreal, that flight. Chatted with some friends. A lot of us slept as much as we could because we knew it was going to be long days coming.

But yeah, we flew, and they had us at the A-pod staying with our army colleagues 00:33:00about a mile away from the actual MMU, Monrovia Medical Unit. They flew us in that first day, and after we got through all the chaos of the airport and everything and our first temperature being taken in-country, we tried to get settled at the A-pod. Some of us ladies went for a run together. Of course, it was just back and forth on a dirt road because we weren't allowed outside the A-pod for obvious safety reasons. Just tried to get used to this heat, this up tempo, and these new folks, and how we were going to all work together. And 00:34:00like, showering in these tents with limited water and making sure we used our bottles of water for anything coming near our mouth, and just really adjusting to that, and also hydrating a lot, which is really hard when you're in the very back of a ladies' tent of about twenty, on the top bunk. Throughout the night there were lots of trips to the latrine, which was quite a distance away. But it was all acclimation, right?

Our first day at the MMU, which was the very next morning, we went over there. Team One, unfortunately, didn't treat us very well, which was difficult. I was 00:35:00there, again, as behavioral health. For folks to hit the ground--and of course we were excited, right, we wanted to help and wanted to get going. But to be received with not a lot of warmth or friendliness or we're-all-in-this-together, it was shocking, quite frankly, and challenging.

Q: What did they do that demonstrated some of that unfriendliness?

BORNEMANN: Some of it I absolutely understand. They were the first group in, and so they felt this real sense of ownership over the MMU, which I totally understand. By the time we left, we were like, we do it this way. You know? I 00:36:00get that piece. But we are also one corps, and we were there for the same reasons. Like, they sat us in a tight tent with no air conditioning on our first day. We're trying to acclimate, yet crammed in, and it was all being talked to instead of us actually seeing anything, and also repetitive stuff that we had in Anniston. So that was a challenge.

Q: Like what was repeated?

BORNEMANN: Well, they tried to do some of the history of Liberia and that kind of stuff, which my dad did, and it was like, we don't need that. A lot of it, actually. Whereas what we needed to do is we needed to see, what are we really dealing with here, and where do you go to the bathroom? We wanted to really 00:37:00start to get into it. Also, things like shutting off WiFi service for us when we had just arrived, and our loved ones didn't even know we were there yet. Obviously, I had my younger sister in labor. It was tough. I think a number of us will never forget that. Needless to say, when it was Team Three's turn to come in, we had signs and we created a training that wasn't a bunch of just sitting, and we also had them in air conditioning as much as possible as part of the acclimation, and we always kept that in the back of our mind. Team Three was very appreciative, and they gave us a chant on the way out. I've spoken to a 00:38:00number of people from Team One, and those who I've spoken with, we've really worked things through. But it was striking.

Q: Was that first day just sitting and getting told things?

BORNEMANN: Yeah, it was. I will say this, too. This is December. We're leaving December in the [United] States, and they've been in Africa, and if any one of them has any symptoms of any illness, they could get stuck there for twenty-one days, and so there's a lot of caution around any mixing. I know we were careful. Even though I don't think any of us came over with anything, we wanted to 00:39:00respect that. But there's a way also to communicate that, not "These are our bathrooms and not yours!" [laughter] But we worked that out, and once they moved out and headed home for the holidays, we moved from the A-pod. We were there a number of days to a week. We moved from the A-pod to the LSA [logistics support area, or barracks], which was right next door to the MMU, so we were kind of one campus. The MMU is where we did all the work, LSA is where we slept, showered. We had one washer/dryer.

Q: Could you describe the LSA a little more?

BORNEMANN: Sure. It actually changed when we were there. When we arrived, there were four tents for sleeping. We had an uneven amount of men and women, so we 00:40:00had one full women's tent, one full--actually, I'm sorry. I think we had one full women's tent, one mostly full women's tent but four guys with a divider were in that tent, and then two full men's tents. And that's it for seventy-five adults. [laughs] So it was very interesting. They were the old army tents. They were very well air conditioned, so some folks complained of being too chilly at night. For me it was divine. Everything was gravel, so it was very weird to start walking on asphalt or concrete or carpet after that experience. But 00:41:00everything was gravel, so it was a matter of always having your shoes on walking around. We had two female toilets with two sinks, two female showers with one sink. The guys had likewise, obviously separate. To be honest, we were very lucky. We had hot water, good pressure. We were lucky. We took turns. At the end of shifts it was "who's next" in terms of showering. In terms of entertainment, and these are the moments that I will always cherish, is there was no TV. People could read but it wasn't really conducive to a lot of reading because, again, 00:42:00we're in big tents. Some people were sleeping. It was a lot of talking, getting to know folks, and I met some of the people who will forever be some of the greatest influences on my life there and people who I would honestly give my life for. Actually, every single member of that team I would give my life for. But I met people who truly became a part of me, became a part of who I am and I cherish those relationships like I do with my family. They are family.

Q: I'd like to hear about some of these people. Is now a good juncture to discuss them or should we get into what happened and it'll happen as we talk?

BORNEMANN: We can talk. It's fine.

Q: Who's one example?

BORNEMANN: Well, I would say the most important person through that experience is the woman who became my battle buddy. Again, didn't know her beforehand. She's actually down here at CDC. Just met, whatever. She saw my Road ID and commented on it because she saw it and that I was an Ironman, and she had done a 00:44:00half Ironman [Triathlon]. Whatever, just met. We both happen to be twins. One of her sisters had just gone through an adoption, so the timing of my sister's birth of her second child and then her sister's adoption kind of coincided.

I don't know. You meet people in your life and they just matter more than anything. She had arguably the most difficult job of any woman certainly of all 00:45:00four teams. She was the only woman that served on the morgue team. Each team did have at least one death, so the morgue team--Team One of course having the most--but she had a very difficult and scary job. She was safety, so she was the one out there spraying the truck as it came in, keeping an eye on everyone in the hot zone. They had to deal with waste, they had to deal with all sorts of stuff. I picked a battle buddy with a pretty tough job, but of course, I run to the fire. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her. I think she's one 00:46:00of the smartest people I've ever met, and I truly care about her on the level of my sisters, without question. I've deployed a number of times but I never really understood the power of the term "battle buddy" until I met her, and even now it's kind of funny. It's not really used as much in the Public Health Service vernacular, but we were in a combat zone in my opinion, and so I still call her my battle buddy. "Friend" or "bestie," it doesn't cut it. My feelings for her are quite powerful and I had a lot of time to think about that when I was in the 00:47:00back. I would often want to be the one to doff her because if anyone was going to make sure she came out of there safe and sound, it was going to be me. Even though she'd get pissy and mad because it's hot, it's so hot, but doffing takes fifteen, twenty minutes. You have to do it right. That's where the highest amount of infections occurred in healthcare workers. I'd say, "You can yell at me all you want, but we're taking our time." [laughter] And I'd yell at her if she was back there too long. We couldn't really yell. We would stomp on the wood floors. She knew if she were back there too long. We had a challenging 00:48:00relationship, but one that I cherish and that will always be truly one of the very most important relationships in my entire life, and that will not change. Years will come and go and who knows what will happen in each of our lives but those feelings will never change. She is certainly the main--I don't know. She's my battle buddy.

But there were also others. My random mentor when I first started in the corps. 00:49:00I hadn't even really been in the corps yet. She was kind of helping me through the process. Her name is Robin Lewis, psychologist. She and I became so close. We were sisters. We are sisters. Helping each other through some really challenging stuff personally, working through issues with--we were both behavioral health teammates. She was nightshift, I was dayshift, so we shared a lot of handover kind of stuff. Robin is definitely hugely important in my life.

One other I have to mention because today is her birthday and she's actually 00:50:00driving here to Atlanta to hang out with my battle buddy and I this weekend, and that's Loveless. Loveless is a dietitian. At the time, she was with the BOP, Bureau of Prisons, in Kentucky, and not a whole lot in common. She has two teenage kids, preteen-teen. Man, I just love her and she loves me and we have this great relationship where we're there for each other and we--"we" meaning most if not all of us had a very difficult time coming home. She was there for me, and I hope I was there for her, and that will always be the case. But there 00:51:00were others throughout. Our deputy officer in charge, Captain David de la Cruz. He was in a tough position, and yet I think he led with a level of competency, transparency and kindness that you don't often get. I could say something about every single person on that team, even folks I may not particularly get along well with, I would still take a bullet.

Q: Thank you for describing them. What happens on the second day and forward from there?

BORNEMANN: Of course, we had the turnover training with Team One, trying to get 00:52:00our rhythm and how we were going to go about things. You always have change. For instance, around Christmastime, just before Christmas, our chief medical officer was removed from the team and we had another chief medical officer stand in who was actually quite frankly much better, especially in terms of the way he dealt with other officers.

Q: What was going on there?

BORNEMANN: I don't know the ins and outs, and I don't want to misspeak, but the assigned one was sent home and the one who did come in really did have a passion for not only helping folks but doing what couldn't be done. Kind of a maverick in some ways, but a caring one. If you talk to others, you'd hear mixed stories. But I liked the guy and he was funny and did care about our patients.

Each day, so we had twelve-hour shifts. We had a nightshift, dayshift. Because I was behavioral health, I focused on force health protection, so my area was our team. It's, again, seventy-four, seventy-three strangers thousands of miles from home, and in our case the holidays, dealing with a really scary disease, living in austere conditions in heat that was unrelenting. I knew pretty early on that that needed to be a focus in terms of taking care of our folks. I also know that 00:54:00people ain't going to talk to you if they don't trust you, and it just so happened that our safety team, which had the lion's share of the work yet not as many resources as they needed, did need help. Knowing that the doffing procedure is very challenging, can be very scary, time consuming, that's where the highest incidents can happen for healthcare workers, I knew that that was a place where I wanted to be. I reached out to our safety folks and asked them, can I help you out, I'm behavioral health and I want to be with folks at probably their most 00:55:00stressed and I want to provide help, I want to provide manpower. So that's what I did.

I would start every day--we were zero-six to eighteen and eighteen to zero-six. I get up at like five thirty or something. Actually, it was pretty funny. My bunkmate--at this point I was on the first bunk as you walked in the door. I will never think of zippers in the same way because we had zipper doors, so it was constant zippering throughout the night. But it was fine. My bunkmate would get up, she would let her alarm go off for a while, and so she would get up and mess around and this is audio so I can do this, but she was messing around next to my head. Each morning I'd reach my arm out from the mosquito netting and I 00:56:00would flick her off, [laughter] and that was my good morning to her. It was kind of our thing and to this day randomly I will send her pictures of me giving her the bird [laughter] and she responds with a laugh and smile. That was how I'd start my days. We all showered the night before. We were disgusting, the sweat and dirt and everything. We'd basically get up and brush our teeth and put stuff in my hair and get dressed and head on over to the MMU. We would eat. We received food from the army at the outset, for the first half, so I can honestly say I will never eat powdered eggs again. Food was unfortunately limited. The 00:57:00army did not give us what we actually needed for the size of our team, so we would make do. I often volunteered to serve breakfast, just to check in with people. Then what I would do was I would create a one pager, what the date was, day of the week, the news headlines. I focused on important--certainly from a US perspective--headlines, or Liberia headlines, folks would want to know about, and would also provide sports scores and an inspirational quote. Didn't need 00:58:00weather. We all knew it was going to be hot. And an inspirational quote. I determined two of the port-a-pots in each of the tent rooms, the changing area, I'd place them up and then I would rotate around, just talk to folks, see how folks were doing. Depending on the schedule of folks going back, I would get into my scrubs and start doffing. We were in modified PPE [personal protective equipment] to doff.

That was my day. I was in and out of the doffing area and wandering to check in on folks, and that was the day. Didn't really break for lunch. We'd usually eat 00:59:00something we could heat up.

Q: What was that, something you could heat up?

BORNEMANN: You know the little mac [macaroni] and cheese, the little Kraft mac and cheese, like to-go.

Q: Easy Mac.

BORNEMANN: Easy Mac, thank you. I would make tuna salad on crackers. We did have MREs at first because we didn't have other food that had been shipped to us from friends and loved ones. Ate a lot of MREs. I have determined my favorite is Chili Mac. In the Chili Mac package, if you get the Chili Mac, they have a jalapeno cheese spread for crackers. What I would do is put the jalapeno cheese spread on the Chili Mac and heat it up. Even better. We would just eat where we 01:00:00could whenever we could. Then we would have shift change at eighteen hundred, and depending on where we were--sometimes we were over there later if we were still doffing our dayshift crew or whatnot, and then head over to the LSA. It would be nightshift's turn, and we'd stay over at the LSA. I would play football with the guys, which I really loved, and we would play games. Occasionally there'd be movies. Certainly, my battle buddy is a little younger than me and she was not, at the time, as well-versed in the power of the eighties Brat Pack films and otherwise, so I felt it was my duty to introduce her to a number of 01:01:00those. We would sit on the floor by my cot and on her laptop and watch movies. But mainly it was a bunch of talking. It was just folks getting to know each other. We would also try to work out. We could only run within the fence, and it was dark, but we would do what we could. We did organize a New Year's Day fun run-walk, where I ran one in the morning for the nightshift folks coming off shift and then one at night for the reverse, which was fun. A number of us did it just to get active, stay active. A lot of folks wanted to use the opportunity to lose weight and get fit and stuff. We also had a prison--we call it the 01:02:00prison weight room--over on the MMU side, where we had a barbell with MRE boxes and TRX [Total Resistance Exercise] and stuff like that. We tried to do what we could to stay in shape. Then we'd go to bed between nine and ten and start it all over again.

One thing that I felt was really important, and because of my dad's work in Liberia, his Carter Center staff person there is an amazing woman by the name of Dr. Janice Cooper. Liberian by birth, educated in the US Ivy League, very bright, very knowledgeable, very passionate, wonderful human being. Of course I 01:03:00had met Janice, and of course, Dad let her know I was going to be there. She was tapped by the minister of health to run the entire psychosocial effort for the country during Ebola. That was their term, "psychosocial," for the mental health piece. I connected with Janice, and we would go into Monrovia. I think we did it once every two weeks, just because to get into Monrovia it took over an hour each way, and we only had typically two cars and limited space. I felt strongly that as the US partner, we needed to have a seat at that table as well so we could hear what was going on throughout the country. There were other NGOs 01:04:00[nongovernmental organizations] there, other countries there. I'll never forget the one day I saw some folks from China, based on their uniform, and I was like, oh my God, am I going to be sitting at a table with an international meeting with China? Do I have clearance to do this? Luckily, they didn't come in. But I was very proud.

One thing I want to make sure is conveyed and is never forgotten and quite frankly is shouted from the rooftops, and that's the United States Public Health Service Commission Corps were the only US federal entity to treat people with Ebola or suspected of having Ebola. There are Americans that provided support through NGOs and other avenues, but we were the only US federal entity that had 01:05:00that direct provision of care, and I am beyond proud of that. The [United States] President asked the DoD [US Department of Defense], the DoD said no, the Public Health Service said yes, and we were there. All four teams of us were willing to put our lives on the line to help a country in dire need and ideally, of course, provide a sense of hope. Hey, if the Americans are there and we volunteer as a healthcare worker, we'll have a place where we can be treated. That's something I truly want to make sure does not get lost. We care and we stood up and said we will help.

Each day was very different, yet also quite similar. We all joked around a lot 01:06:00as we could. They were long, hard days in that heat, but we also got that we were there together and we were the greatest resource to support each other.

I guess I'll share the one story that gets me beyond, and I will not use names even though they actually were reported in The New York Times. We actually worked with a family while we were there, and we would get notified, our chief medical officer would get notified, that someone from the Ministry of Health is sending a patient suspected or confirmed. We got a patient who was quite ill, 01:07:00quite ill, and as we watched his admittance to our MMU, you could tell he was quite ill. That upset many of us. Why couldn't we have got him earlier, where we could really truly help him? Whatever reason. He passed, and that was very difficult for a number of us. Some of the toughest guys I've ever met had a hard time. It was human life. We were there to help and we couldn't help him. One of 01:08:00our roles as behavioral health is when we had a death, we would collect flowers. Obviously, there was a lot of suspicion around Americans, and actually anyone coming in. "What are they doing to our people and the bodies, and are they giving us Ebola?" All of that. Of course, a recently deceased human body being the most highly infectious, it's not like we could let family members see the body. Obviously, it's often a gruesome death. We all felt it was incredibly important to treat our patients, whether alive or deceased, with the greatest amount of respect.

Behavioral health, we would go out and pick flowers, which is a lot harder to do 01:09:00than one could think. But around our area. One of my teammates, Commander Amy Peterson, had gone into town and bought some material, some very beautiful material, and the morgue team would clean the body and present the body with the flowers and the material. We just used it as material around the head of the deceased patient. We would take a picture, make sure the picture came through, 01:10:00and the morgue team would then prepare the body for transport to the morgue. That was something that was incredibly important to the morgue team and our team as a whole, and we felt honored as behavioral health to be able to collect the flowers just to do our little part. Then the morgue team performed their duty. We had a morgue onsite, but we didn't dispose of the bodies. Actually, a Liberian company was tasked with that. The chief medical officer notified the next of kin, the brother, and I went to meet with the brother after some of my 01:11:00colleagues had.

Alvin, who you will meet I hope, is one of our survivors who came back to work with us. A phenomenal young man, a PA [physician assistant], who did become infected but he walked out of our MMU. He's been an amazing proponent for Ebola survivors and reducing stigma and the like. Alvin came with me, and because he was a family member of someone recently deceased by Ebola, we had to keep our six feet band around him. Now, I've worked in oncology social work. For me not to hug or be there to hug a patient's family member after a death, that's hard. 01:12:00In fact, I said, "Would you like anything?" And I said, "We have soda." We didn't have much to offer, right, but soda. "Oh, I'd love a soda, a Sprite." So I went and I got one for him and one for Alvin. To give it to him I had to pass it to Alvin and Alvin had to pass it to him because Alvin was a survivor. In talking with him, I realized he did not want to stay to see the company come and remove his brother's body to go to the crematorium. He wanted to go. He wanted to leave and go to his family. The chief medical officer, our officer in charge, our deputy officer in charge, we all came out and walked him to the street where he caught a moped taxi which a lot of people get around on, just random, and 01:13:00took it back to his family's home. I walked away from that experience and I went around the corner because I'm the tough one, I'm behavioral health, I need to make sure everyone stays safe, and I lost it. I couldn't imagine just losing one of my sisters and hopping in a taxi. And also not knowing if I was sick.

Earlier in the week, the patient who had just died was--they were taking blood at a clinic and something happened and his brother was asked to apply pressure. He had contact with the blood. In talking with him, we needed to provide him 01:14:00with awareness of the risks. He wasn't a healthcare worker--the patient who died was--but his brother was a security guard at an ETU. In talking with him, it was very upsetting knowing the chances of him getting Ebola were quite high, but nevertheless we provided warning, guidance, as much support as we could, and like, God bless. It was very hard. I'm not going to try to remember all the exact days, but shortly thereafter, the two of them, their sister came in 01:15:00positive for Ebola. She fought the fight and she was just so sweet. It must have been terrifying being in that room where her brother had just died all by herself. It's not like a hospital room with the door open and everyone walking around. You're alone. And she fought. Then we got the call that we all sadly knew was going to happen and the brother did have symptoms, so we brought him in 01:16:00and he was confirmed for Ebola. The brother and sister were there together in the confirmed area of our MMU. She was doing better than he was, and each day she was getting stronger and he was not. She was feeling better to the point that she came out and met Loveless, the dietitian and I, around back where I had first met him in the visitor's area because you have to be separated. We asked 01:17:00her what she wanted or what she would like or if she wanted to talk, and she wanted fufu soup, and that's all she wanted was her fufu soup. I'll never forget that. She was so sweet and soft spoken, and we weren't able to communicate very well but it was more just, hey, we're here and if we can get you some fufu soup, we're going to get you some fufu soup. Loveless did get her fufu soup. Then we were leaving and she was getting better and her brother was getting worse. It was a really hard time for our team because we were going home, but we had a 01:18:00patient who we all obviously cared very much about who had already lost his brother who was not doing well. A number of our folks are very spiritual and we all, a bunch of us ladies stood and we were trying to sing to him, but you couldn't get anywhere close and with the air conditioning generators, couldn't get anywhere close.

Q: What did you try to sing?

BORNEMANN: Primarily hymnals. I did not lead. I can't sing, but I was there and I tried to sing along with any words that I knew. By that point none of us were going back anymore. Team Three had already arrived, we had trained them, and we needed to let go. It was really hard. We tried to do what we could, and I 01:19:00remember, please feel this, please feel this.

We left, got back to the States, and then we did find out that he passed. That was very hard for our team, very hard. We lost two brothers. I'm very pleased to say the sister did survive and made it, and interestingly, their mother was the last person--she wasn't seen at MMU, but she was the last person discharged from the ETU Ebola-free when we had that first "we're Ebola-free" in the country. It didn't last for very long, but we were Ebola-free, and that was their mother. It just goes to show you, who knows, same family, same infection. But that's 01:20:00something that was very powerful for us, that family, just one of very many, but one that we became close with, just decimated. How one week I'm talking to this guy, no symptoms, but obviously sad, his brother had passed, and knowing that the likelihood was so high. I will never forget that. I'll never forget him. You know, God bless.

Q: What time was it that you left the country?

BORNEMANN: We left early February. We had to stay a week later because Team 01:21:00Three actually had a number of people with the flu, so they actually took off and were turned back around and stayed at a hotel in Atlanta I believe. Obviously, that's where we all flew in and out of.

Q: What's the concern there with the flu?

BORNEMANN: If anyone brought it over and gave one of us flu symptoms, we were stuck. We couldn't leave the country. More importantly, we couldn't get back into our country, and none of us--working the MMU is one thing. Staying at the MMU, totally different.

Q: There's something I didn't totally get, and that's when the brother or the sister--I forget who was first.

BORNEMANN: The one brother came in confirmed.

Q: Came in confirmed. Anyway, someone is there and they're alone. It's not like 01:22:00your typical hospital, you said, where people are walking outside the door and you can see people. You're isolated. What does it look like, actually? What's the setup that they're so isolated?

BORNEMANN: Because they have Ebola.

Q: Right, for sure.

BORNEMANN: No, I--[laughter] Chlorine kills Ebola, so everything had to be spray-worthy, if you will. The inside of our MMU was basically wood flooring covered in USAID [United States Agency for International Development] tarp. A number of ETUs that you might've seen on Frontline or other coverage had open walls, whereas ours, we actually had air conditioning, so ours had walls. Ideally, that was to make the patients more comfortable and obviously hopefully 01:23:00increase their chances of survival. So that's why. We actually had walls, and these were the same tents that we slept in pretty much. You had an opening to the outside where the patients, if they were healthy enough, could go to their own latrine, or they could go to the visitor's center, again, if well enough, and with a nurse or some other--safety, or someone with them. So yeah, there were walls, if you will, tent walls, but walls nonetheless. It was awful for our 01:24:00providers, and by providers, I'm referring to our MDs [medical doctors], our PAs, our nurses, our safety, everyone that had contact with the patients back there in the hot area, hot zone, if you will, to leave them and know that someone probably wasn't going to go back in for a few hours.

Q: That makes sense. Thank you. Were there other challenges of your job that you haven't spoken about that you'd like to describe?

BORNEMANN: For me, I developed such a strong bond with the team that when we 01:25:00came back--and a number of us had very difficult times coming back, either with our relationships at home or work or other issues--I wanted to keep serving my team and supporting my team. That, I think, affected a lot of my day-to-day life.

Q: When you got back?

BORNEMANN: Yeah. I'm finally feeling two years out that I'm crawling out of a very dark place. Would I change it for the world? Nope. The greatest professional experience of my life. It's such a tremendous honor. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity, but it's been a pretty tough two years.

Q: It sounds like it. I don't want to ask you to go into it to a degree that 01:26:00you're uncomfortable with, but can you tell me what was especially challenging about coming back?

BORNEMANN: I think the hard part, and you hear this in our military colleagues as well, is people just can't possibly understand, and in recognizing that it's not their fault that they weren't there and they weren't in this awful place dealing with this awful disease. It's that kind of fighting, that internal battle of compassion for their wanting to know and their ability, or non-ability, to ever completely understand what it was like. It was a challenge 01:27:00who you could share stuff with, most of which I didn't share with anyone except my team because others wouldn't understand. When I would try to share sometimes, folks would ask questions that I felt were insensitive or not appropriate. It wasn't their fault, but there is such a sense of pride over the work that we did and the privilege, I mean real privilege, of being there in-country and being allowed to serve. So there was some of that, and of course, I was a bit withdrawn and I only wanted to be with my teammates and talk with my teammates, and that affected my relationships at home. "You're back now, move on, get over 01:28:00it." It's just not that easy.

Q: Can you talk more about communicating with your team once you returned?

BORNEMANN: Yeah. I mean texts, email, phone calls. I even had some spouses contact me, which I had to navigate very gently. We wanted to stay connected I think more than anything, and folks did want to share some challenges they were having adjusting back home where, again, relationship conflict and stuff. But to me, I think it was ultimately about staying connected to each other, and that 01:29:00still exists. When we see each other, there's a bond that's just that no one can touch. I can see the way others look at us like, wow, that's kind of cool. We're like, yeah. You have to go through hell to get that type of bond, but it's worth it.

Q: Were there any moments or any reflections that you have that I haven't asked about that we haven't gotten to that you'd like to talk about?

BORNEMANN: One other story was we were there over Christmas, like I said, and a number of us were able to spend part of the day at an Ebola orphanage nearby in 01:30:00Dolo Town. I will tell you that Christmas has completely changed for me. I've never been into a ton of gifts and stuff, but all I want to do is go back and spend Christmas there in Liberia, but it's really expensive. We were there, and the kids sang to us and we sang to them, and spent the day, or spent a--you know, we had to get back to work at the MMU, but just spent time with them. There was a young boy who, for whatever reason, befriended me. His name was Emanuel, and he would wink. He was this adorable nine-year-old kid and he would just--like he knew. I was like, "Oh, you're like a player, look at you winking at the ladies." He had the look that most would imagine a young African boy. The 01:31:00old sandals, the stained t-shirt--actually, his was I think a collared shirt, but stained, and shorts. We didn't really talk much. There was a lot going on, but he always seemed to be near me, and I said bye when we left and "Take care, Emanuel." Then as we got going on the bus, one of my friends, Tyson, said "Hey, you've got a follower." And I looked out and he was following our bus, and I was waving, and then he kept following and kept--he ran about a mile following the 01:32:00bus until he really couldn't run anymore, and I was like, "Emanuel, go home, you're okay." I remember waving at him until I couldn't see him anymore. We went back to the orphanage for another visit, and I like to go to the orphanage as a social worker just kind of keeping an eye on kids, but also our folks and how they were--a lot of my teammates were parents. Just checking in. It was an opportunity to see how they were doing. I went back and I said, "Where's Emanuel?" They brought me one kid, and I was like, "No, that's not the Emanuel--I mean, hi, Sweetie, but--" and they couldn't find him. I never found him again and I don't know what happened to him. I don't know. God forbid, I hope he didn't get sick, but I have no idea. I think of Emanuel all the time, 01:33:00but especially at Christmas. I'll never forget him following the bus. Who knows, we were friendly faces, maybe chasing another life for him that maybe he thought he might've wanted. We gave out soccer balls and whatever gifts that the nightshift put together for us to distribute. I don't know. I don't know what all he saw. This was an Ebola orphanage. I don't know if he lost both his parents, one of his parents, I have no idea. But I hope he knows that there is always another human being on this big old planet who's thinking of him.

Q: Thank you, Jen. It's been a privilege having you here. I should also mention, 01:34:00we said it at the top, that you're now working with the Deployment Risk Mitigation Unit basically helping people stay safe and come back from challenging situations, right?

BORNEMANN: Yep, safe and sound I hope, and whatever we can do to ensure that they remain safe.

Q: Thank you.

BORNEMANN: Thanks.

END