Show Transcript

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How many terrorist attacks have you survived? What about breast cancer?

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What about being poisoned by anthrax?

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I'm hoping that you said no to all of the above.

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But for today's guest, Dr. Nina Cerfolio, she can check off each of those.

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You can basically say that this woman is about to present you with a masterclass in resilience.

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I welcome you to episode 274.

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What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery

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only to find that I was left completely blind.

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And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

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And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

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Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose,

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still trying to understand why or still left searching for that next right path to take,

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we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

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It's time that you start sleeping like a baby too.

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I'm a psychiatrist and I am actually a mass shooting terrorist trauma expert.

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So early in childhood, I think I always was interested in understanding myself

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and other people and what made them do the things they did.

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So I always think I was very psychologically minded and motivated in terms of

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understanding human behavior.

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But more recently in my adulthood, I survived two terrorist attacks.

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One was I was a first responder down to 9-11.

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I made a conscious decision to go down there and to help survivors.

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And what it turned out being was helping other first responders and family members

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that had somehow gotten down there. You know, they had lost loved ones.

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And then as a consequence of

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being a first responder, I developed breast cancer and had a mastectomy.

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And continue to be a patient as a breast cancer patient under guidance of a

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great, great oncologist, actually. I'm very blessed.

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And then in 2005, I chose to go into the second Chechen war and genocide.

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So just to give a brief background of Chechnya, because people often don't know

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where it is or its history, which is very complicated, but Chechnya is a part of Russia.

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It's in the North Caucasus, which has the tallest Mount Elbrus is the tallest

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mountain range in Europe.

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And it's very rich with oils and minerals.

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And the Chechens have been trying to be independent from Russia since Catherine the Great.

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And they're often portrayed by Russians as being terrorists,

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even though, in my experience, they're Muslim and there are these farmers who

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are loving and would give you the shirt off their back.

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They're just the most loving, loyal people.

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And I chose to go into the Second Chechen War.

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So Putin had waged war with Chechnya in the early 90s, and this is what brought him into power.

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And there was an incident called the apartment building bombings in Russia,

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where in seven cities, apartment buildings were demolished by bombs that were planted.

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Hundreds were killed, thousands were injured.

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And Putin blamed these bombings on the Chechens.

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And it turned out that Putin actually was the KGB was the one who planted them.

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I don't know if you remember Alexander Leventenko, but he was the defected KGB

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agent who went to London and was killed by radioactive iodine.

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And he basically came forth and said that he and others were the ones that,

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as a KGB agent, planted bombs, which was blamed on Chechens.

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And also, there was the last apartment bombing.

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There were people that were community members that were being hyper-vigilant

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and checking for bombs at this point.

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And these community members found bombs underneath an apartment building.

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Building, they were found to

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only have been, the materials could only have been put there by the KGB.

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They obviously disassembled them. And then Putin said that this was an exercise

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that the KGB were practicing.

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But it's a long story and it's very complicated.

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But to make it short, he went into Chechnya and started bombing civilians and

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killed probably over 200,000 civilians.

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And I chose to go there at the time in 2005.

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It was the most dangerous place on earth. It was largely internationally ignored.

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And America actually joined forces with Putin in the war against terrorism.

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So as a consequence of that war, he's just continued on because there was no

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protest really by the West or by the world.

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And he did the same thing in Syria and Georgia and now in Ukraine.

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Although the world has, at least for a moment, seemingly woke up with Ukraine

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and the West has given a lot of money for ammunition and backing for Ukraine.

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So that is at least good. But when I was in Chechnya, it was a total genocide.

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It was it was Gaza Strip times 100.

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Yeah. Wow. So so back up a ways for me, though, back to 9-11 was this this first big event.

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And so my understanding when you talked about with your your career as a psychiatrist,

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you were really in the field of dealing with this type of situation, if I'm not mistaken.

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Yes. So I had been in academic medicine. I ran the psychiatric emergency room

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and walk in clinic. So for about five years, I taught residents and medical students.

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So I always was really in the trenches and dealing with people that had been

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arrested or murderers or psychotic people often that didn't get proper psychiatric

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treatment that then became violent.

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Yes. So although I've always had a private practice as well,

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but my expertise is in trauma.

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Yes. Yeah. So I'm curious, when 9-11 happened, would you mind sharing with me

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a little bit about that story as far as your experience?

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Where were you and what you were able to do?

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Yes, I would love to. So the day of 9-11, I'll never forget it.

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There wasn't a cloud in the sky in Manhattan.

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I was walking to see a patient.

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At 8 a.m., the first tower was already hit and on fire.

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And there were rumors that there was a plane, like a small plane that went in,

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but it was like an accident.

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And I'll never forget, my patient said, this was a terrorist attack.

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And then throughout the day, most of my patients canceled because public transport

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was stopped. So they couldn't get to me.

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A few of my patients I did see on that day. And we shared the trauma together.

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Other, but I was literally in the street in front of my office.

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So my office was on University Place and that's about a mile away from the towers.

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And I was an elite endurance athlete at the time. I was running marathons.

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I ran my first marathon in 2001.

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So my training route actually was to run down the West side highway,

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past the towers, the tip of Manhattan to the East side and back.

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It was about a 10-mile loop.

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And the towers really, for me, were a symbol of resilience and strength.

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They had been bombed earlier in, I think, in 1993.

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And they withstood that bombing. A bomb was placed in the parking lot.

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But to me, they were also my running companions. I always looked to them in

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terms of getting a sense of direction. And they always seemed to instill energy

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in me when I was really tired from a full day of patience.

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So I saw the towers, both the towers come down when I was standing on University

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Place, which was a suite in front of my office. I...

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Saw people walking away from the towers covered in dust.

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They looked like ghosts. They were in shock. I witnessed people were trying

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to get news what was going on.

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You couldn't really get a dial

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on your cell phone because it was so overwhelmed with all the calling.

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So people were trying to call loved ones. They couldn't get through.

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So people were listening on the radios for news as is what had happened.

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And then we learned that there was also the attack on our, on our Capitol in DC.

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And it was, I can't even really put it in words.

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It was a horror film, you know, to see the towers come down.

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And literally there were a hundred people gathered on the street and we all

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collectively gasped. Like we all couldn't believe what we saw.

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It was really mind boggling because I never thought the towers would come,

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come to like, they literally came down like pancakes, floor by floor,

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like they enveloped, enveloped inwards.

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And the next day I decided that because a lot of my patients also had canceled

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because they couldn't come to me, I decided that I would go down and help people.

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So I packed a lunch, I packed water, also extra water for people,

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blankets for people that needed them, and put on my work boots and went down

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there and And getting down there, I had to cross several checkpoints.

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And really, the only time I processed any fear was after I passed a checkpoint in Soho.

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And initially, the police didn't want to believe I was dead.

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A doctor at the time I was in my forties and I looked very young and I had to

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prove to them that I was a doctor.

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So they let me through and Soho was a ghost town there. You could literally hear a pin drop.

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I've never heard New York city. So quiet. It was quiet after Trump won, but not like this.

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This was like a vacuum of silence.

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And a voice said to me, you know, turn around and run because everyone had left Soho.

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Most people had evacuated. But I continued down and then I started moving debris.

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It was unrecognizable down there.

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It was fires going on and stacks of debris, like 10, 12 stories high.

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There was ash raining. I don't even remember the color of the the ash.

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There was a toxic, noxious smell to your eyes, to your skin.

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It was hard to breathe down there. Someone handed me work gloves and a surgical mask.

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And just spontaneously, the people that had gone down there formed a bucket

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brigade and started moving debris along the line.

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We handed it off to the next person in an attempt to look for victims under all the debris.

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And then And eventually, I was down there the first day for about 16 hours.

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And there was a medical triage unit that was just spontaneously formed with other doctors.

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I was the only psychiatrist that went down there then.

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And we helped provide medical and psychiatric aid to people.

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I dealt with a construction worker who was having anxiety because he had built

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the World Trade Center and then he had gone down with his crane and couldn't find any survivors.

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He was having extreme anxiety. And actually, somehow we had medication there.

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I was able to give him some Ativan.

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And to talk to him for a while. And eventually he was able to go back and go

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back to work to look for survivors.

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I also was asked to see family members who were disturbing the rescue process.

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They were insisting that their loved one, they had last spoken to them at a

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certain point under the World Trade Center and they wanted rescuers to go look for them.

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So I had to work with them to try to support them so that they would be better

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able to really accept that most likely they weren't going to find their loved

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one at this point, which they didn't.

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Other like firemen getting them medical help as well.

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So yeah, it was really a radically unifying experience of all these first responders

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who came together to help our brothers and sisters.

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And we really rose rose above the horror, the devastation, the death,

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the loss, the injury, the sorrow, and,

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And it was, for me, a very spiritual experience.

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Yeah, absolutely. One question that I am wondering about is,

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here you are, a psychiatrist, you're there to help others.

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Was there a moment in time, whether down at ground zero or maybe back at home

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when you broke down yourself?

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That's a great question. So I was brought up to not show any emotion, to super perform.

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I was expected to be a good little Catholic girl, not express my feelings,

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but super perform in sports.

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And luckily, I was a natural athlete. A lot of people in my family are natural athletes,

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but I was expected to super perform at sports, often not being given the proper

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tools to do so as well, but to rise above that. and at school as well.

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It's sort of my parents' motto was, you know, we're going to break you down,

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but then they never really built us back up.

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Kind of like in the military, they break you down, but then they build you back up.

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My parents would break us down, but not really build us back up.

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So I was a person that grew up, it's called counterphobia in psychiatry,

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which is where where you go into your fears and you overcome them.

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So because I felt unseen, unloved, unworthy in my childhood.

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I felt that I needed to constantly super perform or super achieve to overcome those feelings.

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So to answer your question, no, I never really had a breakdown or processed or cried.

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What I did have was recurrent nightmares of planes flying into buildings,

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buildings collapsing, collapsing, people jumping out of burning buildings.

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These things, I did have recurrent nightmares, but I never had a breakdown or...

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Cried or processed my sorrow there.

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I mean, I have subsequently, I think, in my own therapy, but not like,

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I know some people that went down there who were psychologists started having

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a breakdown there. They couldn't process and they had to leave.

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I very much was brought up, up, so to speak, in an emotional war.

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So going into a war for me was a reflex.

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It was something that I knew too well.

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So it wasn't unfamiliar to me at all. It was how I was brought up.

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So no, no, to answer your question, no.

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Other than with flashbacks and nightmares, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

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Understandable. My other question is, is did you find yourself in the years

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after 9-11 working with a lot of people who were directly impacted by the terrorist

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attacks, whether by losing a loved one or were they or themselves? himself?

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Absolutely. I had many patients that worked down there.

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I had a lovely female patient who had just gotten married.

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She didn't like New York City, who hated working in the World Trade Center buildings.

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She was trapped in the second building and was told to stay at her desk.

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And luckily she didn't listen.

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She hated the World Trade Building. She found them really claustrophobic and hated working in them.

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And luckily, she didn't listen to what she was told and her and her co-workers

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left and narrowly escaped the second building collapsing.

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And then I also had patients who lost their father who worked for...

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So Cantor Fitzgerald was a Wall Street investment firm and it was impacted.

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The first plane literally flew into the floor that the Cantor Fitzgerald was on.

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So no one was ever found from that firm who worked there on that day.

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My patient's father, they never found his body.

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And I worked with her for many, many years. And 12 years after 9-11.

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They found a humerus on top, like the bone in the arm, the humerus,

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on top of a building, A high storied building in Manhattan downtown.

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And it turned out to be her father's bone, like DNA.

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So, you know, most people that lost loved ones down there did not receive a

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body or a bone or anything.

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Any remnants of their loved ones. Yes, I had many patients that either were

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down there that escaped,

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that lost loved ones or that worked down there and were just so traumatized by the whole event.

00:19:32.261 --> 00:19:34.381

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:34.801 --> 00:19:41.001

My last question with direct, you know, related to 9-11 is, is I know that a

00:19:41.001 --> 00:19:44.961

lot of people in the years after had medical issues.

00:19:45.561 --> 00:19:51.261

Did you experience anything yourself? Yeah. So I have difficulties breathing.

00:19:51.621 --> 00:19:56.541

I've been told that I developed asthma recently. And I wonder if it's not.

00:19:56.881 --> 00:20:01.701

I know that several, many people have developed asthma from being down there.

00:20:01.761 --> 00:20:03.681

I guess I just don't even really want to know.

00:20:03.801 --> 00:20:08.761

I developed breast cancer as a result of being down there and my work down there

00:20:08.761 --> 00:20:17.161

in 2017. and I'm followed by the World Health Trade Center Insurance and they're wonderful actually.

00:20:17.381 --> 00:20:24.601

And they basically provide care to people who have 9-11 related diseases.

00:20:24.701 --> 00:20:29.401

Many people who have developed cancer like me from being a first responder down

00:20:29.401 --> 00:20:31.301

there and many people have died.

00:20:31.361 --> 00:20:34.981

So now there are many more people that have actually died from cancer related

00:20:34.981 --> 00:20:42.761

9-11 disorders than actual people who died during that horrible day on terrorists. Yes.

00:20:43.281 --> 00:20:48.421

Wow. Yeah. Yes. Wow, wow, wow. Isn't that almost hard to believe?

00:20:48.981 --> 00:20:55.481

It is. It's so hard to believe. And it's such a testament to how human spirit

00:20:55.481 --> 00:21:00.861

is so interconnected and beautiful that we're all so willing to,

00:21:00.921 --> 00:21:03.501

you know, firemen, policemen, doctors, contractors,

00:21:03.721 --> 00:21:09.561

construction workers, really put our own life on the line to go down there to

00:21:09.561 --> 00:21:14.621

help our brothers and sisters who were vulnerable and in a horrible situation and needed our help.

00:21:14.721 --> 00:21:19.721

It really is a testament to human kindness and love and interconnectedness.

00:21:20.021 --> 00:21:21.301

Yeah, absolutely.

00:21:22.281 --> 00:21:29.321

So my next Next question is, you go through this experience during 9-11.

00:21:29.761 --> 00:21:40.361

What then makes you want to go over to Russia, over out of the country to pursue other endeavors?

00:21:40.801 --> 00:21:45.581

I almost would feel like you might have been like, okay, it's time for me to play it safe.

00:21:45.961 --> 00:21:49.721

But you kept going. And so I'm kind of curious what led to that.

00:21:49.921 --> 00:21:54.041

That's a great question. So I think it would have been wise for me to process

00:21:54.041 --> 00:21:56.421

that or to think that, but at the time...

00:21:57.250 --> 00:22:03.650

I was an elite endurance athlete. I was actually winning some ultra marathons

00:22:03.650 --> 00:22:06.890

and, you know, overall, not just even in my age group.

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