Thursday, April 26, 2007
All That Hindsight
If you haven’t read the post below, read that one first then come back here.
So, I haven’t been able to turn my mind off about that incident yesterday. I’ve always thought that I could be a great leader in a time of crisis, that I would know what to do and be able to delegate properly. That I would keep my cool and composure and only allow myself to break down after all was said and done.
I’m trying not to be upset with myself for failing that guy yesterday. But I keep questioning, “Why the hell didn’t I grab my cell phone and call 911 right away as soon as I pulled over in front of him? Why? The ambulance or Fire Rescue could have been on the scene in time. Why, when the lady came over with her cell phone to help and she stood, frozen in horror, staring at the guy, not hearing me scream at her to call 911, did I not just grab the damn phone out of her hands and do it myself? Why?”
I understand her reaction. I was upset with her for a whole 5 seconds before I acknowledged, the lady was scared shitless and paralyzed with fear. But I’m still upset with myself. I’m trying not to be. I’m trying to give myself that same understanding. While I wasn’t unable to do anything, my mind, though it was seeing everything and it was working over time trying to find any way to get the car doors open to help this guy, there is that part that just doesn’t believe what they are seeing. I knew he needed help in a bad way but there was a part that didn’t accept that anything bad was happening. My initial reaction and focus were totally on getting him out of the car to see if he was breathing after I saw him slump over. I could think of absolutely nothing else. I couldn’t think of a phone, I couldn’t think of summoning help right away, all I could think about was, “Get the damn door open and get him out of the car!”
When the guy came to, although so not even coherent, I couldn’t think to have the people who stopped get in their cars and block him in so that he couldn’t drive away like he was trying to do. I didn’t think of grabbing the phone out of anyone’s hands to tell 911 what was going on. I saw him having a seizure, the lady saw him at the very end of it when he was slumped over in his car. Hell, I didn’t even realize at first that others had stopped; two guys.
I know I shouldn’t be this hard on myself, that I should point out to myself that I stopped to help when no one else did in the beginning. I know I should say that I did the best I knew how. I tried. But there is a part of me that feels like I failed the guy because I was not a leader and cool headed and composed. I did not dictate and ensure that 911 was called and that the others who stopped to help knew what was going on and what they could do besides bang on his windows and yell at him not to move.
I lost control of the situation and I’m not a leader after all. And because of that, the guy drove off. He had just seized, he was totally incoherent, didn’t really know what the hell he was doing, just knew he had to drive. He didn’t know where he was going, his gestures were slow and sloppy, he was unfocused, he couldn’t speak....and I was not in enough control to stop that from happening while waiting for rescue.
And that is going to be very difficult for me to work through. What I am going to do is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile and that is to get myself in to a CPR class and update myself on that. It’s not enough training but maybe it will be a start. I haven’t been in a situation like that for a very long time...it’s been years since I was an MP and you know what? You do lose it. You do lose the abilities you had ingrained in you if you don’t keep training.
I will continue to try and tell myself these things but it’s going to be awhile before I accept that it’s ok that I didn’t do everthing exactly perfectly. Right now I just feel like I failed a fellow human being who really needed it. I was right there, I was there for a reason and I fucked it up. That’s how I feel right now. In time, I’ll ease up on myself but until then, my mind will berate me and conjure images of all sorts of situations the guy could have ended up in after he drove off in a daze. Because I don’t think I’ll ever find out what happened to him. Maybe he’s fine. Maybe he got in a wreck somewhere. Maybe he drove for hours because he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe that was his first seizure ever. Will he even remember he had one? What if that was his first one and he is unaware of it and this will happen again?
Sigh. They say that it takes extreme situations to find out what a person is really all about. And I’m not what I thought I was. Someone needed help and I did not provide it in the way he needed it.
That’s really hard for me to swallow.
