A patient passed out and vomited on me and I did this

My first year after graduating, I worked in a quaint little village in the Victorian countryside. 

I was there on my own on a Saturday morning taking out a wisdom tooth. It was the upper right-hand side 18. He was a lovely man in his sixties. 

The tooth was stuck. 

I was already feeling the adrenaline in my body and thinking to myself, “If I don't get this out, who's going to help me? It's a Saturday morning, and it's only me and my nurse in this clinic.”

Suddenly...

My patient's eyes rolled back.

He started to groan a little bit.

Next all this vomit came out of his mouth. 

His breakfast. Sultanas spewed all over me as I’m trying to extract this tooth. 

Then he had a vasovagal. 

The patient collapsed on the chair with all this vomit coming out. 

There I was with my elevator still in the tooth, trying to take it out. My patient is passed out and I’m covered in vomit. 

In that moment, I froze.

A voice in my head screaming “FERN! Get your act together. What's going on? This is NOT the time to blank out.” 

My nurse was there cleaning up the vomit, but I had nothing. 

I remember being paralysed for a minute or two, not knowing what to do. My whole body went into a stress reflex, and I just blanked out.

Eventually, I came to and started attending to the patient. I still don’t remember exactly what I did - I just remember my nurse running to the medical clinic next door and after what felt like forever, we got him to come to. 

He fainted, that was all. But I was so traumatised by the whole thing. 

I was shaking at that moment and quickly referred him out. 

But I remember, in that moment where I blanked out, I was thinking to myself “Holy shit, this is what happens to us when we’re in panic mode!” 

See, when we allow stress to rule, the body perceives a threat and then does something that it naturally needs to do. 

Fight, flight or freeze.

 In that state, I froze. 

I was thinking to myself, “I can't do this as a professional. This is not cool. I can’t be in freeze mode when my patients obviously need me!”

It’s true, as care providers we can’t do that - it’s our job to keep people alive and well. 

So, what I started to do was build more resilience. 

I learned how to breathe deep in my body, because as soon as you breathe deep and full, you activate the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This then competes with the fight or flight state. 

And the truth is, in that situation you're not in danger - so you don’t need to be in this state.

You need to be able to call on everything that you can to manage a stressful situation and take over when your patients need you the most.

So, how can we do that? 

Awareness and self-talk. 

Be aware when your fight/flight/freeze reflex comes up. 

Speak to yourself differently so you allow your body to know that you got this. 

Train yourself in these situations and your body will learn to respond accordingly. 

How can you calm the body and tell it it's safe in a stressful situation? Because if you start panicking, you're just going to perpetuate those emotions that cause one of those panic responses in your body.

Use your life as practice. 

As you move through it and things stress you out, see if you can contain yourself. 

Can you pull back, move your body and breathe?

Can tell yourself a different story? 

That builds up resilience, so that when shit really hits the fan, you don't go into the limbic system. 

Instead you go into your prefrontal cortex, and you can think properly because you've learned how to override an ancient system (like millions of years old!) - one that’s not really helpful for us modern day humans! 

The truth is, most of the time we don't need to panic. 

We are not under threat. (As much as it may feel that way sometimes!)

We are (mostly) safe. 

So, train your mind and body to understand the difference between a real and perceived threat. You’ll realise that most of them are just mind stories that are not worth stressing over at all.

Remind yourself. 

“I AM SAFE!”

Every bit of stress life throws at you, take it to your very own stress lab and test it. 

You need to be the practitioner here. 

Over time, the data you’ve collected will be worth it. 

Because your body stores that shit. It’s constantly keeping score.

You will grow. IF you keep showing up with every challenge life throws your way. 

And you’ll see it when you next hit a big fat road bump. You’ll pull out your data and the results will be good. Real good. 

There’s always another chance to handle something better than you did last time. 

Love,

Fern

P.S. If you want to really get a handle on your stress, watch my Free Online Masterclass and learn the 4 strategies I used to go from dental burnout to abundant boss lady!