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Emergency Situations

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Submitted By Jonnyboyyy
Words 1295
Pages 6
Jonathan Peragine
Professor McMillan
English 101
June 9, 2015
Emergency Decision-Making Unfortunately, people are confronted with medical emergencies all the time. Such emergencies can be very scary and the people involved must make crucial decisions without much time to deliberate. Because emergencies happen so frequently, I usually already have a detailed plan of how to act when I encounter them. However, I know from personal experience that even if a person has a plan for how to navigate an emergency, his plan will go out the window the minute his emergency becomes a reality. He will have to make the best decisions that he can in hopes of them not coming back to rest on his conscience. In my experience, driving my girlfriend to the emergency room with a suspended driver’s license was not what I would have planned, but ultimately satisfied my conscience. A few years ago, my girlfriend decided that she wanted to play college softball. This meant that I had to spend every weekend going to watch her softball games. One weekend, as my girlfriend was up to bat, she tried to bunt the ball and the ball hit her finger, crushing it between the extreme force of the fast ball and the titanium bat in her hands. Because of the strange thud noise that this created, I knew pretty quickly that something had gone wrong. I became immediately nervous and as she turned to me with a pale and distressed face, my stomach dropped into my shoes. As we made eye contact, I began to hear a slight ringing noise and all of the activity around me slowly drowned out; all I could focus on was her. Before anyone around me could react to what had happened, I was already running over to her and assessing the situation. As she reached her hand out for me to look at, I immediately saw the raw but not yet bleeding nail bed. She flipped her hand over and I noticed that the force of the ball against the bat had burst her finger open revealing exposed nerve endings and tissue. To top all of this off, all of the skin around her finger had been peeled off and her nail was completely gone. The moment I realized how serious her injury was, I became lightheaded and sick to my stomach. But I had to keep my composure in an attempt to keep her calm. However, looking back at it now, I probably revealed in my face how concerned I was, because she immediately started to cry and refused to look at her own hand. We both realized at the same time that this was a medical emergency. After carrying my girlfriend off of the field and over to a nearby grassy area, I looked back and realized that her coaches were more concerned about resuming the softball game than addressing the emergency that had just occurred. It was at this moment that I realized that I was going to need to make some decisions about how to get her to the hospital. Because I did not have a valid driver’s license, this was a problem. However, after a few short minutes of personal deliberation, I chose to drive her to the emergency room myself, which ultimately satisfied my conscience for many reasons.
The primary reason that driving my girlfriend to the hospital without a valid driver’s license does not weigh on my conscious is because I did so as a reaction to a serious medical emergency. Because my girlfriend was screaming, crying, and gushing blood all over, I believed that the quicker she got to the hospital, the better the situation would pan out in the long run. Seeing my girlfriend in so much pain made me feel helpless. In that moment, I wished that I could take her pain away so that she was not suffering anymore. Because I could not do this, the next best thing was to get her to the emergency room so that a doctor could take her pain away.
Before making the decision to drive her, I first grabbed an old shirt out of her car and wrapped it around her bleeding hand. As I began talking to the people around me about what to do next, they all expressed that there was a high liability associated with driving an injured student in their vehicles. While I had not been relying on the idea that somebody else would drive her, I was disappointed and angry that nobody had even offered. This made me feel even more like the responsibility was on my shoulders and I needed to step up to the plate and make some decisions. However, the fact that I was the only person able to drive her is definitely a contributing factor as to why making this decision still sits well with me today. At the point that I realized that I was the only person willing to drive, I stopped deliberating, threw my girlfriend in the back seat of her car, and began racing towards the hospital.
After the drama of the decision-making was over and I had been driving for about a mile, it occurred to me how serious it was that I was driving without a driver’s license. However, regardless of my fear of being pulled over, the sharp pain that I could hear in my girlfriend’s voice terrified me and motivated me to drive faster and faster. As I blew threw red lights and stop signs, I tuned out my own thoughts and fears and concentrated only on what route to take to get her there the quickest. I was comforted by the idea that if I were pulled over by a police officer, I could justify my actions by explaining that I was reacting to a medical emergency. This is part of the reason why this decision does not weigh on my conscience very heavily. As I pulled into the emergency room parking lot, I felt both physically sick from the stress of driving there and relieved that it was over.
Once my girlfriend was wheeled into a room and given medication to manage her pain, my anxiety around driving disappeared and I began to appreciate the decision I had made. Once I knew that my girlfriend was under the care of a doctor, my nerves were calmed and I felt very relieved. Even though the emergency only lasted about thirty minutes, after feeling so many emotions in such a short period of time, I was really exhausted. I felt like I had run a triathlon twice in one day without any break in between. As I sat in the waiting room, I felt completely at peace with my decision and was actually kind of impressed with myself.
Before the catastrophe with my girlfriend and her finger, I had always thought about how I would react in a medical emergency. I had made plans in my head and always thought that I would react very logically and without emotion. However, I now know that planning for emergency situations does not always work out as planned. Yet, I am comforted to know that I react well in these situations, even when plans fall apart. This is a huge part of why my decision to drive without a license sits well on my conscience. I was forced to make crucial decisions in a chaotic situation with adrenaline pumping through me and no help or guidance from others. This situation helped me realize how quickly emergencies can happen and taught me how to react when faced with one in the future. Because of this, my conscience is ultimately satisfied regardless of my decision to drive without a driver’s license.

Personal narrative

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