#this specifically made me imagine post-game. eons into the future

[salty-an-disco]

Making myself Feel Things by reading The End Poem and imagine the two entities talking in it are Quiet and Shifty

To me, Shifty is the blue text while Quiet is green.

Also, for extra Feels, you can enter the name as ‘Hero’.

[daniblogsthroughpandemic]

War

This is not meant to be an explicitly religious or spiritual post, but it will end with a blessing. I am very fond of blessings. I find them kind and warm and sheltering. Distilled, a blessing is love, and we could all do with more of that. In times when it is a blessing that I seek to receive or to give, I go no further than a book of them written by poet, philosopher, and priest, John O’Donohue - To Bless the Space Between Us (see the link below).

I found myself reaching for my copy today after receiving news that we will be offering psychological first aid to our colleagues who are on the “front lines” of the pandemic. I work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and have been on a team that performs psychiatric consults for (at this time, mostly) emergency departments across the state. We do so through a slightly more elaborate and, of course, HIPAA compliant version of Skype. I have had the absolute privilege to a)still have a job that I can b)do from home. So far, all of this has been so urgently present but also so distant. I am receiving a great deal of updates on the virus and the dizzying amount of resources that we are in need of but still don’t have. I cringe when I see the federal government’s response. I’ve tried to be a source of good, thoughtful information to the people in my real-life and digital social networks. I have desperately communicated the dangers and necessities to my representatives. I feel that, for two weeks, my brain space has been thoroughly occupied by the resident COVID-19. Still, I feel eons away.

It inched closer yesterday (the day before yesterday? I can’t keep up) when I read that an attending physician on a service I formerly worked on at an academic medical center had, in part due to rationing of PPE, been exposed to the virus. She is well, no symptoms as of now, though she is taking every precaution to protect her family and has been isolating herself. She has two young children she can’t see or hold for the immediate future. I hope her and her family’s sacrifice is self-evident and won’t pretend to know what she’s going through or what she hopes others take from it. She thoughtfully summarized her experience on her personal social media page – perhaps I can link it here with her permission.

The best thing I can liken to my own personal response, though, was survivor’s guilt. You can’t help but to think “Why her, not me?” I think that question will haunt a lot of us as some colleagues make more sacrifices than others by nature of their position. Some will be exposed and other won’t be for reasons both explainable, even preventable, as well as totally arbitrary. And of course, most agonizingly, some will fall ill and some will die while the rest of us eventually walk away to live out the rest of our lives. Walking away and living the rest of our lives feels far away and my imagination is too occupied to even take that leap right now, but every combat veteran I’ve ever known has told me that that is the hardest part. The rest of our lives...but I digress. 

The organization is acutely aware of this present and future suffering, I’m sure, and is working on ways to address it. I am grateful for this insight and preparedness. I am grateful for my team that is willing to assist. This sounds selfish, and it is, but this all made the email today something of a balm. It was something to soothe a bit of the guilt by letting me think “Thank God. Finally, something I can do.” That said, the email held a lot of unknowns and non-specifics regarding the process, which is always anxiety-provoking and frustrating to me. I am high-strung and relatively inflexible (I know this. I’m not proud of it. I try my best.). I struggle when there is a lack of preparation. I want to do right by anyone who calls (maybe tonight!) and feel trepidation at the suddenness and enormity of the task, but quickly reminded myself - “So do they”. None of us are prepared.

This is the reality of the situation: We, as Emmanuel Macron put it, are at war. I don’t usually like war or battle metaphors, especially in healthcare, but this is how a lot of us feel. My colleagues were dropped in a war zone utterly ill-equipped. They have watched the enemy charging towards them from miles and miles away. Make no mistake: This crisis did not have the element of surprise, not here. They scoped it out – they knew what it was and what they needed and realized they didn’t have it. They asked for it but were told that the threat was not there, that the battle would not happen. The Commander treated an impending crisis with the logic of a child’s game of peek-a-boo – if you can’t see it, then it isn’t there. But it isn’t a game, and now the battle is here. The troops are fighting with grossly limited weapons, ammunition, provisions, etc. There is no central effort to amend this. As a result, there will be casualties that there wouldn’t have been otherwise. No matter what happens from here, that’s something that can’t be taken back. The sooner we act from here, though, the more damage can be reduced, and there’s something to be said for that, something enormous. They fight and they wait. 

I do not know what the extent of this crisis will be. There are still many choices that will create many paths that we could end up marching down. Some are less perilous than others, and I hope that the least treacherous is the one we will be led down. I do know that tonight I feel very afraid and very grateful. I hope to be of service to alleviate the suffering that I can. I have been and continue to think of those on the front lines and, as we say, hold them all in the light. So on that note, I will offer this blessing, taken from page 141 of To Bless the Space Between Us, written for nurses, but applicable to anyone in the diverse occupations who are tirelessly serving the rest of us while exposed and, at times, seemingly forgotten in the trenches of a war:

Your mind knows the world of illness,

The fright that invades a person

Arriving in out of the world,

Distraught and grieved by illness.

How it can strip a life of its joy,

Dim the light of the heart

Put shock in the eyes.

  You see worlds breaking

At the onset of illness:

 Families at bedsides distraught

That their mother’s name has come up

In the secret lottery of misfortune

That had always chosen someone else.

You watch their helpless love

That would exchange places with her.

  The veil of skin opened,

The search through the body’s night

To remove tissue, war-torn with cancer.

  Young lives that should be out in the sun

Enjoying life with wild hearts,

Come in here lamed by accident

And the lucky ones who leave,

Already old and in captive posture.

  The elderly, who should be prepared,

But are frightened and unsure.

You understand no one

Can learn beforehand

An elegant or easy way to die.

 In this fragile frontier-place, your kindness

Becomes a light that consoles the brockenhearted,

Awakens within desperate storms

That oasis of serenity that calls

The spirit to rise from beneath the weight of pain,

To create a new space in the person’s mind

Where they gain distance from their suffering

And begin to see the invitation

To integrate and transform it.

  May you embrace the beauty in what you do

And how you stand like a secret angel

Between the bleak despair of illness

And the unquenchable light of spirit

That can turn the darkest destiny towards dawn.

  May you never doubt the gifts you bring;

Rather, learn from these frontiers

Wisdom for you own heart.

May you come to inherit

The blessings of you kindness

And never be without care and love

When winter enters your own life.

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123427/to-bless-the-space-between-us-by-john-odonohue/