This was the culmination of four weeks of recovery. It’s a delicate post, which is why the comments section is still closed. Due to GDPR reasons. This is just as much my story afterward, about how to return to something resembling a daily routine after a terrible experience.
I’m in a different and better place today than during those four weeks when I wrote this post. That’s good. So, here goes the post.
First and foremost, when you’re offered a first aid course, you say “yes” to it. It’s six hours of your day spent on the course, and you’ll probably never need to use it.
Nevertheless, take the course.
This is a closed post. It’s about why you should take a first aid course and the aftermath of using it.
On August 14th, on the way to Hvolris with work, a student collapsed with a cardiac arrest.
A car driven by a pensioner stopped in front of me and asked if it was one of mine. At first, I had no idea what was happening. I ran down the road until I saw two parked cars with flashing lights, and then sprinted the fastest 300 meters of my life.
A colleague and I were nearby, and within minutes, we were performing life-saving first aid. It continued for six minutes until five heart runners arrived with a defibrillator and got the heart beating again.
Paramedics arrived quickly. A helicopter landed. Everything went perfectly.
The student has since recovered well and without any aftereffects.
This is the best possible outcome.
And this is where the writing actually starts. It starts at the moment when the situation is resolved, the moment when I’m done being in action mode and my task is over. Everything you’re about to read here was written over the course of four weeks, during which I swung wildly in my emotional register.
From being in a good mood, thinking everything was over, to moments where I sat on my floor with the wildest, most frustrating whirlwind of thoughts. This writing is also a full stop because I feel good now. At least, that’s what the crisis psychologist said, and I agree with her assessment. This isn’t an attempt to gather sympathy or anything like that. It’s a depiction of what happens after having acted.
It’s been a couple of tumultuous weeks. They haven’t been pleasant in any way.
I’d go through them again every time if I had the choice.
So we start at…
The Moment After
Once we were out of action mode, I was a crying mess, unable to send a message home saying that I wanted to come home for a day to recover.
From action to complete paralysis. I was picked up at home, picked up at work on Friday by a crisis psychologist, and later picked up safely in a psychological support process.
The First Week After. The brain that was cruel.
The days that followed were absurdly bad. Which is a paradox because it couldn’t have gone any better. But try telling that to my brain, which ran through some really nasty scenarios and thought patterns about everything except what had actually happened.
Irrelevant thoughts that have no basis in reality, thoughts buried for months and years, but which still popped up and made themselves known. When processing trauma, everything apparently needs to surface. Fuck.
Despite everything going well, despite the fact that it couldn’t have gone better, the mind still had to be difficult. I’ve tried to rewire the thoughts and signals that my brain and body have been sending my way, and it’s going fairly well. For the most part.
I’ve had more days lately where I feel like a normal human being.
Strange Words
It’s felt strange and inappropriate when words like “saved a life” and “hero” were thrown my way. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t say anything to the people who said it, but I didn’t like hearing it. Or maybe I was ashamed that, in some way, I did.
It felt wrong to accept those labels. Because what if the alternative had been true?
Would I then have to live with the opposite labels and consequences?
But that’s not the case, I tell myself.
I don’t need to think about that.
I tell myself.
Second Week: Terrible Sleep
“Exercise,” the crisis psychologist told me. “That’s one of the reasons you were able to act the way you did. So, train. Intervals. Not too hard, so you don’t spike your adrenaline. Just enough to feel it, but not so much that it stresses your system more than necessary.” The week began. Teaching.
I rowed a gentle interval session to release adrenaline. Wandered restlessly around my house with a head that didn’t give me peace for anything.
But the body wasn’t there. It frustrated me that there seemed to be no improvement, that I was still sleeping terribly with lots of interruptions. “It is what it is,” I kept telling myself. I didn’t even try to get my head under control or meditate to find peace.
The body didn’t allow for peace. Only exhaustion.
The second week, my sleep was fragmented. One to two hours, then an awakening, followed by more sleep, but not for long enough. I consistently woke up two hours before I had to get up. My mood was a rollercoaster. The swings were wild, and I could only regret that this was the reality of the period. I turned myself into a copy of my old self just to get through work. My daily form fluctuated immensely. One day I was on top of things, the next I wasn’t.
I showed up for work one Wednesday, got irritated by the students’ noise and the need to follow through on a plan, even though I’d done it the day before. My eyes welled up, I felt a tingle in my neck, and an unpleasant feeling came over me. So I called in sick and went home. It was a joke.
Fortunately, I started sleeping again. A whole night’s sleep without issues. That was the highlight of the week.
Since then, my body began to relax again. I could start looking forward to good things and events again. A tough start to a new year. That’s how it had to be, apparently. But it’s now been almost two weeks, and I’ve started to feel like myself again.
Almost.
Start of the Third Week
My frame of reference is skewed. Things that used to seem overwhelming and difficult to handle now feel absurdly insignificant. For heaven’s sake, if I could handle that, I can handle anything else.
But, uh… When will it get better? Because yes, time moves forward, as I’ve also written. But it varies. A lot. That heads-or-tails feeling continues. Adrenaline and stress hormones aren’t foreign to me, but it’s incredible how something that builds up so quickly can take so long to leave the body. It’s getting better, but it’s not a pleasant place to be.
Despite all of this, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I feel terrible, but a life was saved. So maybe I feel terrible, but also good at the same time. That’s self-explanatory, I guess.
Third Week
Work is back in full swing. The whole sleep situation is still tricky, but it’s getting there. I’ve started doing yoga now, and to my surprise, the first two days at work went well.
My teaching is, to put it mildly, uninspired. I’m not fully immersed in the week’s theme and role-playing yet (though my incompetent bully character, “ManJohn,” is quite funny), but it’s moving in the right direction. Tomorrow marks three weeks, so I’ve essentially spent 21 days getting back to feeling somewhat normal again.
This post has been in progress for less time than that, but combined with my private journal, it’s been helpful for me to get an overview of the journey my mind and body have been on over the past few weeks.
Honestly, I thought I was doing better last week, so I started to relax. Instead, it all hit me in a new and unexpected way that I hadn’t seen coming. Intense mental frustrations and a restlessness that made me incredibly angry. I’ve since actually spoken with the student, and that was a huge relief.
The system is still settling, and it’s almost there… I say for the 117th time.
Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is set in stone.
I accept that what happened, happened.
I was the right person in the right place at the right time.
There’s no such thing as coincidence in my mind anymore. But that’s another discussion and another post, which I now allow myself to think about.
The week’s teaching and role-playing end well. A success, despite the total incompetence of the character ManJohn. But it was fun.
The week ends with a trip to the Aarhus Festival, which was quite magical. I relax in Aarhus on Saturday before heading to Glerup on Sunday to celebrate my sister’s birthday. Later that day, we visit my brother and sister-in-law to see their new baby.
My nephew. There’s life and joy. I’m a huge fan of him.
We are now in the fourth week…
… I can condense the event into a single sentence if I want to, and I’m more or less where I want to be again. The stress is going down, and I don’t think about the incident as much anymore.
I can drive long distances again without being overwhelmed by death anxiety.
And I can put a full stop.
So, back to where we started.
Take the first aid course. Or become a heart runner.
I sincerely hope you’ll never need it.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Esben
Full stop.
Etwas 