He was. Now is not

This is something I wrote and rediscovered years later.

a Diary post of when I had just started as an Emergency Room RN.

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He was, and now is not.

Realizing who you are takes careful reflection,

I’m slowly learning that

its ok to feel

its ok to react.
My full time job is to keep calm under stressful situations which has created  a numbness that seems to wash over me. Let me tell you about the first time I had noticed this.

He was 29, The man of the family. he was studying to make a better life for himself and his family overseas…Everything came to a halt when he arrived in our emergency department without pulse or respiration.

He lay there unresponsive so we did what we knew best- bring him back.

This was my first Code Blue

The first time I had performed compressions on the one of the worst case scenarios he was young and as of now we could assume generally healthy. I felt numb but the urge to have him return to life drove me to take action and keep going.

I remember his face.

when I close my eyes and I feel his heart slowly drifting away into another place one that is beyond my understanding.

Medically everything that needed to be done was done.I turned our he had an underlying heart condition that made him a high risk for cardiac arrest due to over exertion. Ok, I can wrap my head around why a person so young can collapse and be reduced to a heart beat that we so desperately want to return… It seemed that it was his time to leave this life for another.

So there I stood over him-Numb. I didn’t know how to feel and I didn’t know what to feel.

I now know that in my desperate eyes was just trying to wish him well on peaceful journey to another place.

All I could do was return to work, and continue onward to help the others in my care. As i write this post I can come to terms with what had happened that day and I shed tears for his family and his friends who knew him well.

Despite this sad time, we can take a moment to appreciate the delicate nature of life and the intricacy of our bodies.

Our functional creation has mechanisms that compensate for others in times of stress but we also wear out. Some more quickly than others,it just reminds me of the importance to take a moment to acknowledge your body.

Get to know every corner of it and let yourself breathe and melt away when you can.