Just to be . . .

Just to be alive. Just to be breathing and talking and walking. For these I am thankful. This past week kind of caught me by surprise. I expected a busy week, because that's how the cookie tends to crumble in the summertime on the trauma service. Many inebriated people rolling into the trauma bay after getting behind the wheel of some motorized vehicle and meeting up with the nearest tree, pole, or passing car.

However, I wasn't quite ready to watch 3 people die in front of my eyes.

To stand within a circle of family members in a dim ICU room at 3 AM and slowly turn off the blood pressure drips and ventilator on a woman whose brain had swelled and herniated beyond survivability. Several hours prior to that tears had rolled down my cheeks as I watched her husband cradle her hand in his after they wheeled his bed into her room for her final hours. They had been on a motorcycle together only hours before. She had actually been wearing a helmet. He escaped with a few rib fractures and the eternal memory of pulling his unresponsive wife from the ditch just before the paramedics arrived. She escaped to heaven.


Only several hours later, a 19 year old man rolled in with a gunshot wound to his left chest. Heroic attempts were made in the operating room to salvage him but his injuries were too severe. Somehow I managed to wipe the blood off my clogs, find a new pair of scrubs, and finish seeing my other patients that morning.

Another blow came a few days later when an elderly, yet what appeared to be relatively robust, gentleman was flown in after being struck by a tree limb while out cutting branches with his son. He lost a pulse in the helicopter. Ten minutes of CPR later, he failed to regain any organized rhythm and was pronounced dead in trauma bay 1. His wife, son, daughter-in-law and 2 grandchildren were en route. None knew of his demise. "You'll need to go and talk to the family, " I was told. Not a conversation I quite knew how to start or finish. Not sure I ever will.

As if the deaths were not enough, I came in one morning to a 21 year old woman, 20 weeks pregnant, who was hit head on by someone crossing the median strip. She delivered a stillborn infant 2 days later while still intubated and critically ill herself. She was engaged to be married this month. That same night, a drunk man walked across a busy highway and now can move nothing or feel nothing below his neck. He blinks responses to me each morning.

So all of this is quite distressing and depressing . . . but it left the following impression on me. Just to be. That's what matters. Tragedy is no respector of persons. Just to be able to spend another day with my husband or family or friends. Don't take those days for granted. Love deeply and forgive widely. If you have amends to make with someone . . . make them. Just to be able to walk and talk and live another day is a precious gift and one you may not receive tomorrow. Just be. It's what really matters.