Why I Write

We were on an international flight. 

It was a crazy thing that we were doing. We were flying to Helsinki for the weekend. 

It was a chance to see our daughter Dorothy. She was studying Russian in St. Petersburg, Russia. We found cheap flights from Toronto to Helsinki and back. Helsinki was close enough to St. Petersburg that Dorothy could take the train to meet us. We could also get to Helsinki without having to go through the complicated process of getting a Visa to enter Russia. Dorothy was going to move home soon. We could use our flight back home to check some suitcases and move some of her stuff home. We also could have a fun weekend seeing Helsinki with Dorothy. It was a crazy trip, but we had a lot of fun. We tromped all around the city seeing the important sights. I had a reindeer steak for dinner. (The wild kind of reindeer not the Rudolph/flying/north pole kind of reindeer!) We brought home a bunch of heavy jammed suitcases of Dorothy’s stuff.

It was a crazy trip. We drove to Toronto, got on the plane and then flew to Helsinki. We came back 2 days later. It was really crazy.  It was really fun. I am so happy that we did it.

On the way to Helsinki we flew through the night. 

I was sitting in the dark in the middle of the night and the plane was quiet. My mind was really active. One of our transplant patients had recently died. His death was boring a hole inside of me. I had taken care of him as a heart failure patient and then through inotrope dependence (initially not a ventricular assist device (VAD) candidate) and then to VAD and then finally to heart transplant. He was an anxious man. He was pretty scared waiting to go to surgery before his heart transplant. I went to see him preop. I tried to reassure him and calm him. This was good news for him, and we were excited for him. 

But there were problems. Eventually he died.

It hurt. I was grieving. Grieving for healthcare workers can be an odd thing. The term that has been used is “disenfranchised grief.” That is defined as grief that is not acknowledged by society. We are supposed to be professionals. We are the experts that are used to all of this. We handle the good and the bad and then go home to our families at night. We don’t complain. We just deal with it. Or do we?

HIPAA rules restrict us. You can’t really talk about what has happened to your patient outside of the hospital. Even if you did, it is hard for your friends and family to relate. They didn’t know the patient. They weren’t there and haven’t gone through what you went through.

You feel a little bit selfish if you feel sorry for yourself. You didn’t die. It wasn’t your family member that died. Your patient’s friends and family are the ones who are suffering. This is their moment of grief. It isn’t supposed to be about me.

We don’t talk about these losses very much. We don’t really know how to process. Sometimes we can talk about how shocked we are about it when we are together at work. Sometimes we even lower our guard and talk about how we are grieving. But these times are the exception rather than the norm.

We go home. Maybe we mention that we lost a patient, but we can’t go into the details. There are details.  Details that are stuck inside of us. Details that are playing over and over again in our minds. Ways that we remember the patient. Things that we are going to miss. Sorrow. Anger. Frustration. All of that. But we just kind of keep it inside and keep moving forward.

And it can come back to us at 3 am, in the dark, on an international flight to Helsinki.

I pulled out my computer and I started to write. I was not going to put down details of this patient. But it felt so good just to write. I started writing in ways that could somehow release a bit of how I felt inside. I wasn’t writing with a plan to share it with anyone else. It was writing to let me feel and express myself. Could I somehow make the words on the screen portray just a little of the feelings? Could I use words to paint a picture of my emotions. Could I put down words in a way that would somehow be more understandable. More ordered.

Perhaps the writing is like a comb being pulled through tangled hair. It sometimes pulls and takes a little bit of effort. Sometimes it pulls through easily and just flows. It can feel really good as it pulls smoothly through the hair. Once it is finished things seem better. Ordered. More in place. 

And that is why I write.

People tell me that they are reading and really like my blog posts. I tell them, “Thank you!” and then awkwardly don’t know what else to say. I want to explain to them that it makes me really happy if it helps them. I want to explain how much it helps me. I want to explain even more. I want to say how it is really like an indulgence for me. I want them to know how it lets me acknowledge my thoughts and my feelings and let them be free for a while.  I could tell them how doing that can bring me purpose and meaning and the chance to really feel alive.

It is like being young and running at full speed through a meadow. You are not running because you have to. You are running just because the meadow is there wide open in front of you and because you can do so. Running with your arms and legs pumping and your lungs starting to burn just a little bit. Running with the good feeling of having and using energy that is bound up inside of you and just dying to get out of you.

I write because it feels just like that. There are thoughts and ideas and emotions that are inside me that are begging to get out of me. I write because it would be fun if I could just somehow capture the ideas or the feelings in writing. And if someone else reads it and it means something to them, that is just amazing. It means that it worked. 

So, in the middle of the night on a plane to Helsinki I wrote. In Helsinki I took some pictures. Later I posted what I wrote with one of the pictures on Linked In. I am glad that I did. 

Life gets busy and there are a lot of things to think about and do. I didn’t do as much writing for a while after that. Then I was told that I had cancer. And with it I wanted to not just live life anymore. I wanted to taste and experience and feel and really live life. I wanted my emotions back. I wanted to feel them and express them and live them.  And so, I started writing again.

I hope you like my blog. t makes me happy if you do. I never thought I would write a blog or write as much as I have the past several months. But it has been good for me. Please forgive me if I get a bit awkward when I try to talk about my blog. It has been important for me. It is hard for me to explain why. Maybe I have captured a little bit of why here?

That is why I write.