Well...guess I'm posting this because I know that maybe only the
people in this group may understand and help me understand some of
the feelings I had this past weekend after helping some friends thru
a crisis. I got a call about 12:30pm Friday night from a friend of
some mutual friends who said that the son and father had been at a
Boy Scout campout and the son fell and broke his leg(spiral fracture
of the femur...BAD break for a 14 yr old or anyone!). He then went
on to say that after the son fell and called out for his dad the dad
came running out of his tent and slipped on some gravel and went
full speed into a picnic table hitting his chest at the diaphragm
and upper sternum area and that both of them were in an ER near
where they were camping which was about 60 miles from where they
lived. The mother/wife was home without a vehicle and this friend
asked if I'd be willing to go pick her up(in a town about 15 miles
north of me) and bring her to the hospital as both were asking that
she be there and that they didn't know at that time if the father
may have internal injuries from the blunt trauma to the chest. I
said of course and made the trip down to the hospital with the
mother/wife and stayed there with everyone until about 3:30am until
the drs. said the dr. said the CT scan on the father showed no
internal injuries other than severe bruising of all his organs in
that area as well as the diaphragm, etc. and after I'd gone up to
the son's room with the mother so she wouldn't have to go there alone
(she tends to get quite hyper about things). I was glad I did go up
with her because we got up to the nurses station on Will's floor and
the nurse stopped us to tell us that the dr. had just told Will that
the reason his leg broke where it did so easily was because he had a
bone lesion in that area which made for a soft spot but that they
didn't think it was cancer.

I was glad to go and glad that I was able to help...I would have
done it again if asked. However this was the first time I spent
any time in a hospital, in an emergency room, in a medical crisis
since that last time with mom in Feb, 2005 when she stroked the
final time and I went thru that 3 hour ER wait and then up to ICU
with her with no one there with me. I am understandable concerned
about Will's leg(the son) as I've known him since he was about 4 yrs
old and he has been much in my prayers(as has the father) during all
this. It hurt to see Will hurt like that...he's a good kid and
faces a long hard road to recoup from this. The drs. are pretty
sure after seeing the lesion during surgery that it isn't bone
cancer but we will know that in about a week. What surprised me
was how much the whole event seemed to just sandbag me. I was
exhausted the next day but it was different than just lost sleep..I
almost felt that same numbness and uneasy daze that I felt that
first day after mom's last stroke when I went home for a few hours
after spending the initial 5 hours in the hospital with her and
knowing that this was the end for her. It was almost like the
shock that I felt surrounding her final 6 days and eventual death.
It took me until about Sunday to recoup from it and luckily God
helped me realize Saturday afternoon what the feeling was and maybe
where it was coming from. It just surprised me to have it impact me
that way this long after having gone thru that final time with mom.
I even joked with the father in the ER when he thanked me for
helping that I was just a little out of practice with these middle
of the night ER runs having let down from not expecting them the
past 1-1/2 years but that I'd had enough practice at them before
that. I hope he nor any of them realized or saw the impact it had
on me...I didn't realize it until I got in my truck to drive home
that morning leaving the parents there to stay in their son's room
overnight.

Is this normal? Am I going to react like this anytime I get put
into an emergent even like this? Thankfully I'm the type who
always holds it together very calmly and able to make decisions in a
crisis and gets the shakes and emotions after it's all over. I
just pray no one realized how it was hitting me as I don't want them
to feel badly in anyway. But it really took me off guard how it
effected me so much. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Does it
just come with the long term conditioning of repeated crisis events
of caregiving?

Betty