mortality...

I don't know why, but it seems that every once in a while I am forced to stare straight in the face of a life or death situation... This week, watching a new life arrive, in an unplanned way, was another reminder of both the frailty and miracles that life has thrown my way...

I've been a birth doula for several years now, and I spent several of the last few days caring for a dear friend during her labor, and doing my best to help out once the baby arrived... Most people don't know what a doula is, or what my role is during childbirth, but I can tell you that it's never the same on any two occasions...

I have spent much of my time holding hands and offering reassuring words about a mother's strength and innate ability to know what's "right" for her and her baby... I have had to take on a more stern role and remind a laboring woman that she's not the first person to have experienced labor pains, this has only been to get a woman to snap out of a brief loss of focus during natural childbirth's "transition" phase) ... I've even had to step in and "play catch" when a doctor left for coffee while my client pushed out her beautiful baby boy with only my hand to guide her son into the world... on that occasion, the nurse stood in the hallway screaming for someone to "get a doctor"... I remember that I kept motioning her to calm down so that the first thing that little boy heard wasn't her squaking in the hallway... After all, there wasn't anything that nurse was going to scream that was going to delay that little boy from his illustrious arrival... This last birth was different though... There was a long labor, that lasted for days, and ended with an emergency c-section... I sat at the head of an operating room table and reminded M that everything that she felt and everything that was happening, was exactly how it was meant to be, and a beautiful baby girl arrived this past Saturday, at 3:30pm, and weighing in at 8lbs 8oz...

Sometimes labor is easier for one woman than another, but the overall experience and outcome have all been the same... Each woman did exactly what she had to do to get her child into this world in whatever way felt "right"...

It's strange how I somehow end up in a position to help people, whether I am prepared or not, with some of the most positive and negative experiences of their lives... I barely slept a wink last night, but in my brief slumber, I was reminded with a brief glimpse in my dream of an event that I've tried to push out of my head since it occured...

Nearly forteen years ago, as I was arriving home from work, I slowed down to crest a hill before pulling into my driveway and heard a horrendous screech and crash... A conversion van and a small pickup truck had crashed at the end of my driveway... The van turned into the oncoming pickup truck due to the beautiful sunset that I'd just been admiring a few moments before... I pulled my car across the two center lanes of traffic, blocking traffic in both directions, and jumped out of my car as my stepdad came flying out of the driveway in his big white Suburban and blocked the lanes on the other side of the accident scene... He ran to the pickup truck and I ran to the van... A 9 month old baby was in her car seat (not a tear in her eye) and a 9 year old boy sat in the passenger seat in complete shock... Mom was a mess, her face didn't really resemble a face anymore... The bones in her face were completely shattered and her head bobbed back and forth as she tried to remain conscious... Another good samaritan stopped to offer assistance and I ordered him into the back of the van to get behind the driver's seat and hold the woman's head still until paramedics could extricate her from the van... The woman's husband was standing on the side of the road screaming, and he had grabbed his son from the front seat... I grabbed his arm and explained that he needed to lay his son on the ground, on a blanket that someone was holding, and elevate his legs because he was in shock... the man looked lost, I squeezed his arm tight and made it clear that he needed to follow my instructions carefully... he just shook his head and asked about his daughter... I told him he could take the car seat out of the back of the van, place her on the ground next to his son, but that under no circumstances could he remove her from her seat or try to move her in any way... I told him to sit and wait for the paramedics to arrive and that I'd do my best to care for his wife... Once I realized that everyone from the van was being attended to, I went over to the pickup truck and found a gruesome scene...

My stepfather and the guy that I was dating at the time had physically torn a door off of the pickup truck when they couldn't open the door... I stood outside the driver's side window and saw one of the most awful thing's that I could imagine... This man had hit with such ferocity that his body lay under the dash, on the floor of the truck... He had hit his face on the steering wheel, which tore through his forehead and his face was literally hanging down off of his skull... I could see the muscles and bones of his skull, and my stepfather was using a tshirt to try to stop the bleeding and hold his face together... I thought that was the worst of it, but it wasn't... I told my stepdad to check the registration of the vehicle, I wanted to keep the man conscious and remembered that addressing someone by their name was the best way to keep their attention... That's when I realized just how bad this man's injuries were... My stepdad realized when he looked at the registration for the truck that the man whose face he was holding in place was that of a man who he'd gone to school with, and seen regularly at the local auto parts store... I was standing in a pile of fluid on the ground... I hadn't thought much about it because the van and trucks hit with such force that the engines were spewing oil, transmission and radiator fluid... What I didn't realize is that there was actually blood spilling from under the door of the truck and falling at my feet... I realized that the blood couldn't have been coming from his face, and that's when I saw something that I'll never forget... The man's body was contorted into an inhuman position, and I reached down to check his pulse when I realized that his leg was broken... It wasn't just broken, the bones of his lower leg had punctured through where his knee had been and the lower leg was held to his body only by a thick chunk of skin where the back of his knee once was... I grabbed a tshirt that someone handed me, off their body, and wrapped it around the leg and applied pressure to try to control the bleeding...

In rolled the calvary, or so I initially thought... An EMT came rushing over to the van where the woman still sat being held in an upright position, trapped like an animal. We were awaiting the arrival of the fire department and the jaws of life... I just stood there holding the tshirt wrapped around this man's leg... Suddenly, the EMT told me to "step away from the vehicle"... Apparently he had no idea about the extent of the injuries... I told him to stop yelling, and if he wanted to come over and hold this guy's face on, and stop the bleeding in his compound fracture, then I'd gladly walk away... He poked his head into the pickup truck cab and realized how serious the man's injuries were and told us to maintain the pressure on the wounds while he called in for additional assistance...

The baby and little boy were put into the first ambulance to arrive on scene, taken to the children's hospital, apparently because they were the easiest to transport...

It seemed like forever, but eventually a few EMT and ambulances showed up on scene and took over for us... It was as though mere moments had passed, yet somehow in that time they'd somehow managed to extricate the woman from the van and get the man on a backboard and off to the hospital...

Once the scene was cleared, I climbed into my car and drove down my driveway... I walked into the house and sank to the floor... I don't know why, but I was completely overwhelmed by the experience that I'd just had, and had really begun to process what I'd just encountered... I had just spent 30-45 minutes organizing the people who responded to the accident scene, spent time holding a man's face to his skull and his leg to his body... I watched the life drain out of one man's face and tried to recognize my neighbor, whose face had been completely disfigured with the crash...

My mom had no idea what had happened, and as we all stood there relaying the events that had just transpired, I realized that she saw something in my expression... I felt the blood drain from my face and leaned against the wall and slid to the floor... she put a hand on my shoulder and told me "you did what you could do, but it's up to God now"... At the time that I was assisting these accident victims, I hadn't really thought about what was happening once the ambulance left the scene... But, now with a moment of pause, I realized that I had no idea whether or not the drivers would survive their injuries... After all, they'd both been injured severely and their injuries were worse than anything I'd ever seen...

What my mom said wasn't what I wanted to hear, or what I needed to hear, but I suppose it was true... I'd happened upon a scene that I hope will never see again... But, it was outside my control... I played the hand that I was dealt...

I have no idea how this post ended up so long, especially since it started out on a completely different path, but I suppose that the words simply needed to be set down for one reason or another... As usual, things happen for a reason...