Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Little pink flowers

Little pink flowers Walking into the trauma bay, I was greeted by a little girl who was brought in after a playground accident. I stood at the head of the bed, talking with her, asking her her name, attempting to soothe her worries as the bright lamps shone down upon her and her clothes were sheared off. As I began my secondary survey, I did not get farther than her ears. A single little pink flower rhinestone stud adorned her right ear, its counterpart missing from her left. My memory began to reel as my neurons insistently replayed my mental B‐roll from an encounter with a previous patient, months earlier in that very same trauma bay. I see cherubic cheeks, tiny ears tucked under soft curls, tiny fingers, tiny t‐shirt, and underwear. Soon, I remember performing CPR on her tiny body, for it was then that I first noticed her earrings in my attempts to look away from the abdominal bruising and the blood pouring out of her body: little pink flower rhinestone studs. Just when I thought I was healed, a little pink flower earring in the present vividly transported me back into the past and a day that I had hoped to forget. I snap myself out of it, “No hemotympanum.” Today's patient's trauma evaluation returned negative, and she was discharged home with her mother, walking out of the trauma bay. The only loss was one little pink flower earring. No toe tag this time.Sitting down, I could not help but perseverate on the little pink flower earrings, running through the arrest of that winter night: the sights, the sounds, the smells as clear as ever. I thought, “Why me? Why must I live with this memory, haunted by a pair of earrings?” Then, I realized, “Why not me?” For months, I had prayed to forget the trauma of the aptly named trauma bay, but perhaps there is power in remembering, even when the memory is of pain. In medicine, we are quick to declare our patients as “survivors.” However, as a community of largely altruists, we are also quick to call the daily trauma, unfavorable odds, and losses that we encounter as “part of the job.” We fail to accept that we too can be survivors and often secondary victims of the pain we seek to remedy. It has become second nature to attend to our patients with a trauma‐informed lens, approaching them with patience and gentleness, yet we do not always adopt that perspective with ourselves. In stressing our resilience as we move‐on to the next patient and show‐up for another day of work, we forget that resilience in itself is a trauma response: by treating trauma, we too endure trauma.The little pink flower earrings, the tennis shoes, the clothing, the dates, the names, the room numbers, the screams, the faces that we never forget are reminders that we can wade through unspeakable pain, sitting with suffering, and in spite of it all, grow as human beings and physicians who are grounded in a firsthand understanding of heartbreak. Does remembering suffering make us good doctors? Maybe. At the very least, it makes us humane physicians. Through the trauma we encounter and wounds we incur, we develop a richer understanding of not only human suffering, but also empathy. Wounds we gather from “just doing” our jobs portend a unique perspective that cannot be taught in any seminar or textbook, silently speaking the language that trembles into the hearts of our patients who seek to be healed: vulnerability, courage, and love. I remind myself “blessed are those who mourn” and that perhaps there is power in remembering. From suffering, beauty blooms, even little pink flowers. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Academic Emergency Medicine Wiley

Little pink flowers

Lucas, Christy
Academic Emergency Medicine , Volume 30 (11) – Nov 1, 2023
Download PDF
1 page

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/little-pink-flowers-ICkJ3xKfqA

References (0)

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
ISSN
1069-6563
eISSN
1553-2712
DOI
10.1111/acem.14737
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Walking into the trauma bay, I was greeted by a little girl who was brought in after a playground accident. I stood at the head of the bed, talking with her, asking her her name, attempting to soothe her worries as the bright lamps shone down upon her and her clothes were sheared off. As I began my secondary survey, I did not get farther than her ears. A single little pink flower rhinestone stud adorned her right ear, its counterpart missing from her left. My memory began to reel as my neurons insistently replayed my mental B‐roll from an encounter with a previous patient, months earlier in that very same trauma bay. I see cherubic cheeks, tiny ears tucked under soft curls, tiny fingers, tiny t‐shirt, and underwear. Soon, I remember performing CPR on her tiny body, for it was then that I first noticed her earrings in my attempts to look away from the abdominal bruising and the blood pouring out of her body: little pink flower rhinestone studs. Just when I thought I was healed, a little pink flower earring in the present vividly transported me back into the past and a day that I had hoped to forget. I snap myself out of it, “No hemotympanum.” Today's patient's trauma evaluation returned negative, and she was discharged home with her mother, walking out of the trauma bay. The only loss was one little pink flower earring. No toe tag this time.Sitting down, I could not help but perseverate on the little pink flower earrings, running through the arrest of that winter night: the sights, the sounds, the smells as clear as ever. I thought, “Why me? Why must I live with this memory, haunted by a pair of earrings?” Then, I realized, “Why not me?” For months, I had prayed to forget the trauma of the aptly named trauma bay, but perhaps there is power in remembering, even when the memory is of pain. In medicine, we are quick to declare our patients as “survivors.” However, as a community of largely altruists, we are also quick to call the daily trauma, unfavorable odds, and losses that we encounter as “part of the job.” We fail to accept that we too can be survivors and often secondary victims of the pain we seek to remedy. It has become second nature to attend to our patients with a trauma‐informed lens, approaching them with patience and gentleness, yet we do not always adopt that perspective with ourselves. In stressing our resilience as we move‐on to the next patient and show‐up for another day of work, we forget that resilience in itself is a trauma response: by treating trauma, we too endure trauma.The little pink flower earrings, the tennis shoes, the clothing, the dates, the names, the room numbers, the screams, the faces that we never forget are reminders that we can wade through unspeakable pain, sitting with suffering, and in spite of it all, grow as human beings and physicians who are grounded in a firsthand understanding of heartbreak. Does remembering suffering make us good doctors? Maybe. At the very least, it makes us humane physicians. Through the trauma we encounter and wounds we incur, we develop a richer understanding of not only human suffering, but also empathy. Wounds we gather from “just doing” our jobs portend a unique perspective that cannot be taught in any seminar or textbook, silently speaking the language that trembles into the hearts of our patients who seek to be healed: vulnerability, courage, and love. I remind myself “blessed are those who mourn” and that perhaps there is power in remembering. From suffering, beauty blooms, even little pink flowers.

Journal

Academic Emergency Medicine – Wiley

Published: Nov 1, 2023

There are no references for this article.