Moments of Permanence - Post a comment

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Somehow I always forget...	Sep. 2nd, 2023 @ 06:35 pm

... that the ability to compartmentalise in a crisis doesn't mean you don't have the emotions. It means you postpone them.

It's such a weird thing. Yesterday through last night all the terror of Wednesday's medical misadventures hit me in a rush.

I spent a lot of time verbally rationalising. Both why it was okay to be afraid - you know, the experience I went through being legitimately terrifying actually - even though it was two days later, and also why I wasn't in serious danger at the time.

Because the whole thing would have been genuinely life-threatening outside of a hospital situation, but I was in a hospital, so it wasn't.

They had oxygen tanks on hand. If I'd needed a transfusion they would have had the supplies on hand and I was already cannulated so they wouldn't even have had to mess around trying to find a vein. There was a doctor right there. There were nurses right there. Guaranteed if they needed to call the crash team that will have been something they could do in seconds, and hospital crash teams don't fuck around. (We had to call one for my mother once. They turn up astonishingly quickly.) They had a pulse oximeter on my finger pretty much as soon as the problem started and they were watching my saturation levels very closely.

I was fine.

And on some level, for all that I was, in the moment, clear-headed and outwardly calm, on some deeper level I was also absolutely terrified and that's okay too. That was a scary thing to experience.

It was, mind you, a lesson in why that kind of compartmentalisation - which my parents do, too, I have no idea if it's genetic or learned or what - is generally speaking a very good thing, I think.

Because if I'd been feeling that terror in the moment? If I'd panicked? That would have made the situation so much worse and I might in fact have had to have the really unpleasant outcomes. If I'd started hyperventilating I would have been in so very much more trouble.