In my years of being a trauma ICU nurse, I've seen every form of shock that there is. The story is similar and repetitive...a young man is driving home and falls asleep at the wheel...a young woman gets brutally injured after a driver hits her while crossing the street...an old man falls while hanging Christmas lights for his grand kids...
They all have one thing in common. They happen suddenly, without warning. One minute, everything is fine. The next minute, the whole world changes.
In each case, I see family members struggle for control. A young mother will freak out when we don't get her a blanket fast enough to cover her 19 year old son's feverish body. "He's COLD!!" She will yell, her shrill voice screaming out for someone, anyone, to listen. "What do you do?" people will ask me. I tell them that I get her the blanket, then I stand there and hug her, and listen to her. I'll take a deep breath and quietly ask the universe to calm me down and work through me. Guide me. Somehow, it always comes back to the same thing...
Control.
If there's one thing I've learned from nursing families through the emotional trauma of a physical trauma, it's that they all struggle with the complete loss of control. Imagine it....You get a call at 3am to come to the hospital. There's been an accident. You frantically get there, walk into the hospital room, and see the busy hustle of nurses and doctors. They ask you about your son's wishes 'in the event'...CT scans, chest Xrays, study after study after study. Days turn into weeks, each doctor more grim than the last. One morning, you wake up sore, foggy, and wishing that this terrible dream would end. Your whole body aches. You go up to the hospital to see your son lying there. Breath in...breath out. 14 times per minute, just as the breathing machine is set. Eyes that once looked into yours don't wake. Arms that hugged you...don't move. Lips you kissed on their first day of school now kiss a breathing tube. Breath in. Breath out. It's breaks your heart to watch. I cannot imagine the hell of living it.
Give her the fucking blanket.
That control thing is a bitch. I don't dance around it at all. I touch them, if they let me. I'll look them in the eye and speak to them directly and lovingly. My eyes always well up with tears, and I don't even try to choke them back. I'll talk about what their son needs, and why doing something to warm him when we are deliberately cooling him down could harm him. I tell them that the blanket is best used to wrap around their own arms in this cold, dark room. And, then...I'll give them something that they can control. I'll teach them how to do oral care. I'll grab lotion and show them how to care for his skin. I'll let them assist me as I turn them so that their son doesn't get pressure wounds. Like a baby needing their safety blanket, I'll let the mama control something...anything....for her son.
The irony of it all is that to be a good ICU nurse, you have to be a control freak.
The last year of my marriage was aching agony. I was always on guard, waiting for the shadows to jump out and bite me. On the afternoon of one Christmas Day, I went for a walk with my sister-in-law and told her that I just wished he would fall in love with someone else. I couldn't express to her what I really felt...that I wished that the universe would not make me go the treacherous path that lay ahead. A year and nine months later, and I was sleeping with a knife under my pillow, the same knife that had been held to my throat on several occasions before. I was such a hypocrite. I was assessing for family violence in my patient's families by knowing the indicators of victim behavior because they reminded me of my own.
I started praying to a God that I knew existed, but couldn't understand. I prayed that somehow I would get through it without a hospital bed or the morgue.
Somehow, I surrendered. I don't know how it happened, truly. I went to Al-Anon meetings and I memorized passages of Codependent No More. I searched for answers in my Psych Nursing textbook from school. I prayed. I found true joy that was completely independent of my circumstances. I committed to therapy. I remember the redemption of my work nursing others, how it was the only thing that really gave me perspective and gratitude, and I leaned into those conscious thoughts. I knew that this was about me and my issue with control. Like that patient, my marriage was on that hospital bed. Whether or not it survived was already written in the stars, and I'd been screaming for a fucking blanket long enough.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
There was a patient. She was hit in the head with a blunt object by a man to whom she professed love. She had a child. She did not survive. I cried for her, but I cried harder for me. Then a feminine energy surrounded me. It came in the form of a few women that I allowed to get close and became vulnerable with. After telling my story, I listened without speaking. It spoke into me with such clarity, such focus. I knew my path was before me, and her collective voice was so clear and so wise that I was sure that God must be a woman. But I was still afraid.
So then, the universe brought to me a Marine. His jaw was chiseled and his shoulders were broad. He used them to protect those who were vulnerable. He had a hard outer shell with a gooey soft center. He told me his own story long before I was in the place where I could tell him mine. He showed me what friendship really looked like. And I felt safe and protected, and I was sure that God must be a Marine.
I took the advice of those wiser and I told my family. After the safe house shelter, someone from church offered up their home for me and my children to stay in until he was arrested and charged.
Like a warm blanket in a cold, dark room the universe brought them to my side. My brain-dead marriage with its mechanical ventilator...Breath in. Breath out. There are no trophies for the one who hurts the most, there is no glory in suffering. What is best for us is always what is best for everyone. I let go. I closed my eyes. I put a foot out in front of me into the dark vastness of space, and then the ground appeared beneath my foot. Then another. And, I walked with my eyes closed and my heart open. The ground would not show itself to me until my foot was already suspended above it. With no control of where I was going or with whom I would travel, I walked.