Trauma

     Trauma. It’s a word that by definition means emotional or physical shock after a disturbing experience. I used to think I wanted to be a “Trauma Surgeon”. This job entitled the ability to take a time-bound medical complication and relieve the pain from the patient as efficiently as possible. Trauma surgeons never have time to think, they go purely by instinct, because they know that their patient does not have much time. Whether trauma is physical or emotional, the reality is that severe pain will be felt.

Where and when does trauma begin? Maybe it can starts at your high school’s first football game. You can hear startling news and, with blurred vision and skewed sensibility, you can sprint to wherever you must go, purely by instinct, to find the news that you have to hear, but hope to be untrue.

The next thing you know, you are in the emergency room, waiting to see your family member. When you are allowed into their room, you immediately see the potential devastation of what a substance can do to a body. You realize that life is fragile, and why the substance is illegal. Perhaps you hold your parents’ hands and you wonder how it ever got to this point. You pray that this never happens again. It’s tough, but that’s trauma… and trauma lingers. Even when the family is alive and safe in the comfort of their home again, the memory of the solitude felt while being in the waiting room endures, seeded in your brain. The worry in people’s eyes seems gone on the surface, but never totally goes away. However, while there is so much fear and sadness, no one will make the same mistake again. More importantly, no one ever takes anyone for granted anymore.

      Trauma can be unpredictable, such as a natural gas explosion, that devastates the lives and homes of many, or a terrorist attack that takes thousands of American lives. There is so much that we don’t know about trauma. But this much I do know: as much as it hurts you, you certainly learn from it and grow.