{"id":2159,"date":"2009-11-04T04:27:59","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T04:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2009-11-04T04:29:42","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T04:29:42","slug":"aftermath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2159","title":{"rendered":"Aftermath"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSo since I’m still getting emails asking how I’m doing after last week<\/a>, let me take a moment and tell everyone.<\/p>\n

Shortest version: pretty much fine. Thursday and Friday were hard; I’ve got to say that I am in awe of the emotional strength of people who deal with stuff like this every day. I doubt that I could. But the tips that I got from the professionals on managing my recovery were all extremely useful.<\/p>\n

Saturday I went to the racetrack with my motorcycle. On one hand, I was distracted enough to get black-flagged and moved down to the beginner group, where I pretty much just rode around. On the other hand, I managed to transfer a fair amount of my stress onto the pavement:<\/p>\n

\"tire.jpg\"<\/form>\n

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’d been feelling…but here’s what made a difference.<\/p>\n

First, I got a lot of attaboys. In On Combat, Grossman talks about the fact that many officers and solders who go through hyperstressful events walk out and don’t get those. No one shot at me, nothing blew up, I took no meaningful risks – but I got a lot of warm feedback, and it made a difference. Friday morning I was furious with myself for not, somehow, doing better and changing the outcome and making that guy one of the 4 or 5 percent who survive traumatic arrest. Hearing, over and over, from people who’d BT and DT that I’d done the right things, and that there was no simple magic “McGuffin” that I’d forgotten or didn’t know to do showed me how irrational that response really was. And once the logical underpinnings of the bad feelings were kicked away, the sheer emotional support made a huge difference. <\/p>\n

That’s a lesson, people. When you see a EMT, or a police officer, or a soldier, all those dumb-a** “thank you for your service” remarks that we’re all a little embarrassed to say – well, say them. That man or woman you’re saying them to has or will go through some things that make what I went through look like Pla-Dough time at preschool.<\/p>\n

Second, I talked about it. Ad nauseam. I blogged it, and Facebooked it and talked it into the ground with TG. I processed and processed it and at some point became kinds desensitized to it. I’m sorry I subjected everyone to that, and appreciate the patience.<\/p>\n

Third, I tried to learn from it. there are some concrete things that I took away as I’ve played it out that I know I’d have done differently, and while I hope like heck that there is never, ever a next time, if there is I have a few new cards in the deck. Specifically, I should have mobilized some of the other bystanders immediately, instead of waiting – I should have had one or two people helping me; I should have cut away the whole side air bag and had better access to the victim; I should have gloved up before I went into the car, rather than halfway through the process; and if I can find a c-collar that folds flat enough to carry in the back pouch of my Aerostich, I just might get one. I’m not at all sure I would have used it in the situation Thursday – the injury was just too traumatic for me to really do much at all. But on a lesser but similar injury it could be useful.<\/p>\n

Finally, I’m going to keep working on my skills, and am building a library of classes I want to take.<\/p>\n

There’s always more to do.
\n–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to everyone, Armed Liberal is feeling a whole lot better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}