“Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.
There’s a pain goes on and on…”
Marius, “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”, Les Misérables
I guess I look pretty good on my DD214. Well, halfway decent anyway. Truth be told, I was only ever in a couple scrapes and overall, never experienced any trauma I wasn’t prepared for mentally. I was very, very fortunate and I know it. Not everyone was.
If it’s even a real thing, I have an almost photographic memory. My favorite instructor in the SF medic course caught on quickly that I had the grading algorithms for the trauma lanes memorized and was getting cocky. The patient does this and I do that and problem solved and I pass. So, he started killing my patients (all pretend, in case you were worried) even when I did everything by the book and after one such incident, I threw a handful of gauze, said a very bad word, and stormed out of the tent. He followed me out, grabbed my arm, and led me to the woodline where he told me:
“You’re not God! You don’t get to say who lives and who dies. You can do everything right, everything by the book and people are still going to die on you. In this line of work, you are going to lose sometimes and if you can’t handle that then you need to find something else to do. When it’s all said and done, when all the inevitable second guessing is past, if you can look in the mirror and say that you did your best, then sleep well”.
I think that this is why I never had to deal with too much survivor’s guilt. You know, “Why him and not me? I should have done more, or done…X and he’d still be alive, etc, etc”, but what about survivor’s envy?
I cropped him out of the picture out of respect, but the guy whose blood is on the road in front of me did not make it.* I don’t believe in any “blaze of glory” nonsense, but if I’d known then what I know now, would I rather it had been me cut down in the prime of my life instead of a future of implanted devices, prescriptions, diplopia, wheelchairs, incontinence, dysphagia, and so on?
This is just idle speculation brought to a mind by a phone conversation with an old acquaintance not long ago. I told him about my MS (he asked) and he remarked that if he had to deal with those sorts of disabilities, he’d put a gun in his mouth. That sort of brutal honesty is the norm with most of my circle, but it rubbed me the wrong way and I guess it showed in my voice. He backtracked by reminding me that I had a wife and kids, “good reasons to keep going”, he said, while he was single and couldn’t abide the thought of living in a home or having a stranger look after him.
I guess I get it. The year after diagnosis was the hardest on me depression wise. I could still walk and drive then, but the reality that this wasn’t going to get better….or at least not get any worse had set in. I was never suicidal (I like me way too much to harm myself), but there was a point where if a semi had swerved into my lane on the highway, I don’t know if I’d have tried to avoid it. I’m better now and I’d like to think I’d have plenty of reasons to keep going even if I didn’t have my beloved family. But what about that 31 year old medic in the picture? He was single and proud to the point of being arrogant. If I could go back and tell him what the future held in store, would he have taken more chances, or deliberately exposed himself to enemy fire? I can’t say with certainty what past me would do, I can only tell you what I’m doing now and that’s doing what I can, while I can.
Who knows what the future holds? It’s comforting to think that maybe future me is thinking that if he could go back, he’d tell me to suck it up a little longer because something good is just around the corner.
*Mr. Scheuermann, you were right. I did my best and still lost, but I can look at myself in the mirror because of your hard lesson.