No fear. It does no good. I'll relate an anecdote about my emergency room session when I had my heart attack and triple bypass...
I was driven to the E-room by my daughter; it's late on a Thursday night. Picture this: small rural trauma center "unstaffed" because it's Thursday night and no patients are expected--so I had to holler from the reception counter for the staff to come get me. Four nurses swoop down on me when I said I was having chest pains. I first noticed the clock from my gurney as they roll me to a stop at 10:55pm.
There was an ambulance out front, and the accompanying EMT (maybe 23-25yr old) was shootin' the shit with a nurse. They'd just finished casting a woman's broken arm.
Mr. EMT abandons the broken arm and asks, "can I help?" to the person I figure was the head nurse. She said, "BP", and all four nurses around my gurney make room for the EMT to move in on my arm. After a couple minutes of medical administration and a dose of tPA (a blood clot eradicator), everyone at once, as if practiced, all step back one step and look up at the wall above me. All eyes (except mine) are on what I assume is a monitor over my head behind me.
I'm struck by the choreography of their movements: teamwork, teamwork, teamwork-- they had moved like they rehearsed it a thousand times. NOW, in this moment, I'm struck by the grave looks on their faces. Two of the nurses seem to sway back and forth, as if they wanna jump forward and do something, but they're waiting for a verbal cue. They all stand as if frozen on the monitor. It's 10:58pm.
I say to who I think is the head nurse, "this ain't going like you want, is it?"
She looked from the monitor directly at me and said, "we're doing everything that we can and we should, sir." The doctor walks in and talks with a nurse as he assesses the monitor(s).
I say, "have you ever heard of the Nixon non-denial denial?"
Everyone but the EMT chuckles. He's the only one too young to understand it from personally following Watergate. I look at the time; a minute to 11pm. I give myself til 11:10. If I'm still here then, I figure I'll make it. We got so busy after that I never saw the clock again.
Dr. Ostrowski, the emergency MD, tells my wife the next day he thought I had 10 seconds when he saw me.
And the point of this story is, parse out the small shit. The only thing that counts is what the head nurse, as a true professional at her job, replied:
"We're doing everything that we can and we should". Whether she intended it or not, her words literally spoke for everyone working on me.
You'll be in good hands. There's a time to think about family and a time to take care of yourself. Keep your energies contained. From the moment you're sedated your future is not yours to govern. When you come out of it in the recovery room, you'll know it's time to change your focus; to recovery, with a goal of continuing on with life. Until then, "taking care of family" isn't something you can do.
