Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Sitting Still

2020; Elsevier BV; Volume: 75; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.annemergmed.2020.02.002

1097-6760

Marina Boushra,

Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

Please forgive me for going back to work the day after you died. You know how I do with sitting still. I know people think it’s strange that I’m here following a trail of blood to our trauma room when I buried you 12 hours ago. I get it. It is strange. I see the worried looks when I put down my bag and start pulling on a plastic gown. But I don’t know what I would do at home, in the dark, without sutures to steady my hands, without medicine in my mind. This department is my safe. This flimsy blue gown is my armor. I will not heal sitting at home; you know how I do with sitting still. I’m standing in the doorway of a patient room as he screams about the spirits he sees. He asks me if I believe in them, if I believe him. He asks me why I won’t listen to the spirits talking to me. He is becoming frenzied, agitated. I wonder, for a second, if he can see you, if you’re there. I want to ask if you’re saying something to me. Except, I walk away and I order the Haldol. I always thought you would die at home. But when you didn’t, when your heart stopped and they brought you back (could I have stopped it somehow? left more DNRs around the house so they saw them? sat at your bedside for the 5 years you were on hospice?) I tried desperately to find comfort in the words that I knew—pulmonary embolism, obstructive shock, pressors. Still, somehow, those words are things that happen to other people. They are not things that happen to you. So the words I use to give patients comfort just sit there. Stagnant, still. If I joke with my colleagues, if I throw my head back and laugh at the absurdity around me, the rectal foreign bodies, the antics gone wrong, please know it isn’t because I have forgotten you. I have not somehow cheated the stages of grief and moved on. I will mourn you for every day that I am alive. But…if I can keep dancing in time to the delicate rhythm of this place, if I can toe the line between life and death, maybe I can stop worrying that I’m already forgetting how your voice sounds. There is no magic cure for this, I know. Just supportive care. So I swallow my love for this frenzied place like analgesia, and I let the logos of it run through my veins. I will let these things support me as my body heals itself. Please forgive me for going back to work the day after you died. You know how I do with sitting still. I can make sense of the electric chaos of the emergency department. I can’t make sense of a world where you’re gone.