I'll never make it out....alive

Twisted dark thoughts Fighting to remain in control Feeling of overwhelmingness An overwhelmingness that has no rhyme or reason I'm not sure what I'm doing here But I'm swimming against the tide The water gets darker Not unlike my thoughts My dreams continue to haunt me Each night gets darker than the one before And I fight to sleep for a moment Undisturbed, at peace. Fighting for a deep breath but there's something inside Taking up space and so I gulp on these bits of air Trying to get enough To calm this panic The tide is rising and I'm fighting as hard as I can But how long can I go before it's too much?

What is wrong with me? Why do I think this way...First world problems I have nothing to be upset about. I have nothing to feel this way about.

Thousand Yard Stare

Slipping out the door after my fourth 13+ hour shift, without a real break in between, scarfing down a piece of pizza here, my Starbucks caramel machiatto and Rockstar, a few walnuts and candies there. So ready for some time off, to rejuvenate and recuperate after this particularly stressful stretch. The patients are a blur, the rooms they occupied a revolving door. At one point I stand in one spot and survey the emergency room, and I notice after a particular rush of patients has ebbed away, almost everyone has that thousand yard stare; going through the motions; their personalities, energy, and sometimes compassion sucked dry by the demands of doctors, patients, coworkers, themselves, their hidden worries about their families at home. The call lights continue, the orders keep coming, and the waiting room queue only gets longer. The panicky feeling rises higher and higher, the feeling that I'm losing control, that I'm getting further and further behind. I haven't peed since this morning, but there are so many things that need to be done, he needs pain medications, this person needs labs drawn, the 1 year old baby is crying in room 1, and my provider wants to know what the status is on the patient in the other room, and family members are asking for water, and it continues, as one minute clicks into the next, and I just do my best to keep up with the chaos. I try to be in the moment, this patient has been waiting an hour and a half to be seen; my mind flashes to the time I had to wait that long to be seen, the anxiety and frustration, the impatience. What are they doing in there? Why is it taking them so long to come see me? I look them in the eye, introduce myself, and thank them for their patience. They are my focus now, and I sit and listen, and try to my best to make them feel better. It's rewarding, so rewarding and so utterly draining. Lying here in bed, wondering what time my 2 year old will wake up in the morning, and wondering if I'll have the energy to focus on him, to give him the attention he demands and deserves.

Yet on my days off, I can't help but wonder what's going on at the hospital, what I'm missing out on...

The Hardest Part

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” ~Anne Frank

I knew couples who’d been married almost forever – forty, fifty, sixty years.
Seventy-two, in one case. They’d be tending each other’s illnesses, filling
in each other’s faulty memories, dealing with the money troubles or the
daughter’s suicide, or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning
to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person.
Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in a half
century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better,
and she’s become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point.
I wish someone had told me that earlier. I’d have hung on then; I swear I would.”
Anne Tyler, "A Patchwork Planet"

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always
with the same person."
Mignon McLaughlin

I'm not advocating for loveless marriages. But it's also the case that marriage
doesn't make us happy every day. No marriage does, but your marriage serves
as so much more than just a vehicle for immediate individual adult needs. It makes
one world for your child, and children will tell you that means everything to them.
Elizabeth Marquardt, Between Two Worlds

A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
Carl Sandburg

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
Elizabeth Stone

They're the ones dying...

Recording a trauma...motorcycle accident, no helmet. His injuries severe, prognosis bleak. Recording blood transfusions, medications, injuries. Hardware sticking out of his arm from previous surgeries, swollen left eye, the doctors looking at him, shaking their heads. Just another patient.

Until I hear he is related to so-and-so, and with a sinking heart I hear he's related to people I know, and my dad even knows him, and so on, and he's not another patient; he raised so and so, and these broken arms cradled her, and those eyes looked down on her as he gave her away, and suddenly it's so much harder to leave him behind as I walk out the ambulance doors. He stays with me, days later, as I watch her Facebook updates, and my heart is heavy with sorrow and prayers.

I don't want to know relationships. I don't like knowing the details of who they know. Montana is way too small. It's so much easier when there is no relationships, when they are an unknown person.

My heart aches, and my prayers go out to him. God knows what is best for him; the x-rays stick with me. If he makes it, he has a hard, long road ahead of him. Part of me wants him to go in peace, but then I think of her, and God, what would I do if that was my dad? I would want him to fight with everything he has, because I can't picture life without him.

I hate that life is so fragile. I hate that it changes in a split second. I hate that we can't control it.