trauma.

If you aren't interested in reading a short novel, or have a weak stomach than read no further.

It happened two weeks ago, walking back to the truck after church in Huisan Akha Village. I was walking with my friends Gee, Blah, their kids, and another village mother and her two children. Just as I got off the phone with Rusty I heard a loud smacking sound and turned around to see the worst thing I have ever seen. The little girl, two years old had been hit by a motorbike driving too fast through the village. The bike literally ripped her face off. All the skin below both of her eyes and her entire nose ripped off her face and hanging above her mouth…I have never seen anything as gruesome and hope to never see anything like it again. Everyone looked to me, the nurse, with eyes of panic, but I’m certain my face mirrored theirs. I yelled to jump into the truck and within 10 seconds of the accident, we were flying down the mountain in the back of a pick-up truck to the Chiang Rai Government Hospital.

I sat next to the mother who was holding onto her little one in pure panic. We held the little girls hands down who kept trying to pull on her face, now bleeding all over her mother’s chest. I tried to stabilize the mother as we bumped over windy dirt roads, and she rocked her daughter, yelling in Akha and Lahu. The little girl was still crying, and breathing through her mouth, but we had no idea if she had any brain injuries from the blow. The little girl cried every once in a while, maintained consciousness and continued to breath the entire way to the hospital though through gurgling cries with the blood pouring down her throat.

The mother kept asking in Akha, “how will she eat tonight?” and “we don’t have citizenship, how will we pay for the hospital fees?” “I know that if she had a broken leg or broken arm the doctors could help, but with something like this? You think they can help?” Blah kept telling her, “don’t worry about the money…the doctors at this hospital are very good,” and every time Blah leaned forward to look at the little girl, her face lost all color. I thought maybe the little girl would die on the way and couldn’t imagine the feelings of a mother seeing your child in this kind of pain, and not being able to do anything. I had flashbacks of Olive dying in my arms, and how peaceful she was as she went…this however, was purely traumatic.

We drove through red lights, yelling at the top of our lungs we had an emergency and other kind drivers stopped traffic for us. To say it was dramatic is an understatement. When we arrived at the hospital, the mother handed me the little girl, and I ran inside the ER as fast as I could. As soon as the nurses saw her face they gasped and rushed her back into a private room to assess her. The doctors wrapped her face with sterile cloth and intubated her. X-rays and a CT scan followed revealing that her nose had been crushed, as well as her cheekbones. The results of the CT Scan came back, showing no damage to the brain, and we all breathed a giant sigh of relief. Surgery was scheduled for later in the evening around 5:30. The doctor said that if she had arrived 5 minutes later she might not of made it.

I walked to the nearest store to buy a new shirt for the mother since hers was now covered in blood. As I walked I felt like I was ready to pass out myself and started nervously shaking like you do when your blood sugar is low after a crazy adrenaline rush. The lady selling the shirts asked why I had blood on my shirt and I started telling her the story and the tears started welling up in my eyes. As soon as I was ready to pay, I realized I had no money on me and called Blah who came to pay for it.

The little girl stayed on the same floor of the hospital that Olive was on, so this of course brought back many memories, and we saw many of the staff that we were hoping to connect with again…nurses who cared for Olive and the cleaning ladies who we ate with every day. She couldn’t go into the ICU until after surgery, so she was outside in an overcrowded room full of patients and their families.

The drama continued in the afternoon as we waited for surgery. The little girl continued to bleed from her gaping wound, all the while gasping for breath between all the blood dripping down her throat. Her head was completely wrapped in sterile gauze, and blood was soaking through and dripping down onto her pillow. Her blood pressure was also low, which was concerning me. Meanwhile, the nurses sat comfortably at the nursing station talking and laughing in casual conversation. I asked about three times for them to come and suction her, and three times they asked me to wait. After the third time of asking I had a small explosion and said in Thai, “I can’t wait any longer. We’ve been waiting for about five minutes now and no one has been willing to help!” She finally came and suctioned the little girl removing lots of fluid, then turned to me and said, “See, there is nothing to worry about, it was dry…nothing to even suction.” I then informed her that I too was a nurse, hoping she would stop treating me like I knew nothing, and she seemed embarrassed to know this. I told her that I know the nurses here at the government hospital are very smart and good at what they do, but for some reason today it felt like nobody cared about this little girl or was doing their job.

If this little girl was Thai (and not hill tribe), and her parents had some money, I guarantee you she would have been given better treatment. 

Numerous times that day I asked my Akha friend Blah to ask the nurses different questions, and she said, “Better if you ask…they will listen to you because you are a foreigner more than they will listen to me if they know I am Akha.”

In the evening, after the four hour-long surgery, the little girl went to stay in the ICU.

After staying in the hospital for one week she was discharged home...much faster than anyone felt comfortable with. She came daily to the clinic I am volunteering at to get her suture wound cleaned an assessed. Since then her stitches have been removed, though doctors are recommending continued plastic surgery--which the parents don't think will be necessary.

Thankfully the motorbike insurance came through and covered her entire hospital bill of 50,000 baht ($1,666 US dollars) which sounds affordable to an American until you understand that an average days wage for an Akha farmer is 90-120 baht ($3-4).

rice planting.

This last week all the parents from the kids at the Akha Youth Development Center (where we work) came to help plant rice for their children during this next school year. After helping plant rice even one time, you gain a whole new appreciation for all the sweat and sore muscles that go into farming this staple item.

Rusty took these photos last week...

Tears.

Drops of emotions much too strong to be expressed through words.

You come at the most inopportune times.

I’ve learned ways to hide you from the world when I don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable--but sometimes your strength is greater than mine and you roll down my cheeks and allow them to see right into my heart.

Mostly though, you join to me late at night when I’m laying in my bed wishing she was next to me longing to find her scent lingering on her belongings.

You escape out of the corner of my eyes when reality sets in that she is never coming back.

You run over my lips leaving a salty trail behind as her memories overwhelm me.

The last hours we had together.

The shape of her mouth when she cried.

The strong grip of her fist around my index finger.

Her wide captivating eyes, full of life.

Lying skin-to-skin, fast asleep, feeling her breath on my chest.

In October 2009 a few weeks after Olive’s birth in Chiang Rai, our close friend Blah shared a dream with me that she had about Olive. We talked about this dream often during Olive's life, wondering if this would become her future.

In the dream it was a beautiful summer day and Blah was out in her front yard hanging laundry out to dry. Little Olive came hobbling down the hill at the hostel calling out her name, speaking perfect Akha. She was beautiful with curls, but had a limp in her walk. She ran up to Blah (maybe about three years old) and jumped on her back and continued talking with her while they finished up with the laundry.

You creep down my cheeks when I think about the loss of the dreams I had for her.

The simple dreams of being her mother. Of changing her diaper in the middle of the night…waking up to soothe her…to feed her…to hold her close and rock her to sleep.

the waves of grief.

We are grateful to be back here in Thailand, connecting with relationships here, learning more language, and having a strong sense of purpose. At times, this last year feels so distant, and on other days, everything rushes back. A relative of ours who lost her son a few years ago, wrote an e-mail recently that explained the journey of grief so well...

"The journey of grief is a very long, hard journey. I often describe my grief as the ocean---Some days the waves are so calm and far away & other days they are so very, very strong."

Today was one of those days when the waves felt "so very, very strong," and the memories of Olive so raw and fresh. I've avoided going to the hospital in Chiang Rai yet, mostly because I know that it will bring up so much emotion and so many memories. Today I watched videos of Olive that I haven't watched in about three months, and it did just what I suspected...surfaced the deepest emotions inside of me.

Almost every other day,  I run into someone who asks me how my daughter is doing--and hasn't heard that Olive died. It's in those interactions that I try my best to push down my emotions to keep the conversation comfortable for the other person, but the frustrating things about tears is that they often come even when I try to push them away. Those conversations usually end with a shuffle of the other person patting me on the back and saying, "It's okay, you'll have another baby someday."

Being back has brought with it many distractions which has also felt healthy in other ways. Not having all of our time focused on ourselves and Olive has helped with the healing process, but we are also realizing the importance of giving ourselves those spaces to grieve, and not to live in denial.

Mostly though we just miss her, and are realizing how deep our love was/is for this little life. We are slowly realizing just how much she has changed us.