Actually, I will note I tend to cry. Like, hard and uncontrollably. I need to fall completely apart. Sometimes, like then, it happens immediately. Other times it takes a while to process, or happens in increments, or even happens several times. But I tend to require some catharsis, and sometimes I only get it by actively digging so deep into emotion as to shoot out the other side.

I also know that part of the reason I try to act and speak honestly is to prevent that revisiting later. I have done lots of things solely because I knew, down the line, I would look back and wonder about it. There are a few things I regret in ways, but most of them stem from a moment of not living as honestly as I could. Way I figure it, when I look back, I know I was honest, and I meant it, and as long as I can say I tried as hard as I could, well, that’s all that can ever be asked of me.

Mileage, of course, varies.

For my part, I generally become exhausted and go into an emotional coma for weeks. Takes a lot of energy to suppress that much emotion. And though it helps at the time to have much of your brain switched off, it sucks that you don’t remember very well. Tough to check up on yourself, take inventory, etc. like, “Did it do the right thing?” “What exactly did I say and was that right?” “How long did it take for X to happen?”

I mean, tough to process that kind of thing where there isn’t much–at least conventionally–in the way of memories to process. You can’t even really console yourself with “what would I do differently next time?” because you’re not entirely sure what you did the first time.

Crazy stuff.

I think one of the reasons I remember breaking her breastbone so immediately and tactilely is that it was so completely unexpected, something not at all according to the plan in my head, the lessons I had learned and been taught. You’d think they would mention it, that they would say, look, at some point, when you’re pumping, her ribcage will buckle, and you’ll feel it happen. Then again, if someone had, that moment might not stick out like it does because I’d have been like, oh, good, breastbone broken, check another point off the process in my head, if that makes sense.

And yeah, I definitely would have felt worse. Like that scene in Saving Private Ryan, when the guy just stands there while, a landing up, his comrade gets stabbed. That scene was so hard to watch.

And I didn’t know that about about the statistically-speaking. Interesting.

Thanks for the sentiment, but if I imply I regret the experience, I don’t. I’m sorry she passed, but as many others have stated in this thread: it was her time. Truly, those five minutes were the most humbling of my entire life, and I think of them anytime someone tells me how arrogant I am, or how awesome.

Glad you liked it, though, and good luck refreshing. May you use it well should need ever be.

In my imaginings of those types of situations, I am terrified, frozen, insane with fear or panic, etc. In the moment, in the actual situation, when the shit really goes down, I am a machine.

Let’s hear it for involuntary coping mechanisms.

Also: fewer middle-aged women have heart attacks than do middle-aged men, by far I think, but when the former have them, the chance of survival is much less.

It was her time, and no amount of bodice-ripping you didn’t do would have changed that.

G

I really liked this Will - although I’m sorry that you had to go through it. It makes me want to go back and refresh my CPR knowledge so, if the moment comes, my autopilot’s ready.