Today marks the beginning of year 3 as a successful OB/GYN at The New Hampshire Gordon Hospital! My day started out great with being able to sleep in a little bit since my patients delivery was slow going, then at 9:13am I brought a beautiful new life into the world! I'm on my lunch break now with one of my good friends Dr. Joshua Kirkson. All of a sudden I get a page to go down to the ER stat so I rushed down to the ER to see what the page is about when all of a sudden I see my mom laying on a stretcher with burns over 50% of her body, her firefighter gear in a bag next to her on the table, and multiple broken bones. I just freeze in place where I'm standing and try to calm myself down with some deep breathing so I don't have a full on panic attack while I'm working. The ER doctor, Dr. Sebastian Price spots me and comes up to tell me the situation, he says "Dr. Lea I'll be honest with you... your mom isn't in good shape. She has pretty severe smoke inhalation, her oxygen saturation keeps dropping down into the low 80's, she has burns on 50% of her body, she has a major concussion with a subdural hematoma, multiple fractures in her right arm, right leg, 3 broken ribs with 2 of those fractures penetrating her lung, and has some major internal bleeding in her abdomen. She has you listed as her medical power of attorney and obviously as you can see she's unconscious from the concussion so you need to make some decisions on how you want us to proceed." I think long and hard about the conversations we had after she lost her longtime partner Joseph and what she wanted done if anything happened to her so I know that she wants the chance to fight so I'll fulfill her wish and tell them to do everything possible to save her. I ask Dr. Price "Did you already page the neurologist, the orthopedic surgeon and the general surgeon?" Just as I asked that I see the general surgeon, Dr. Sophia Link, the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Joshua Kirkson and the neuro surgeon, Dr. Alan Perry walk into the ER and come up to me and Dr. Price. First thing Josh does is gives me a long hug, then they all said at the same time "Don't worry Dr. Lea we got her and we will do everything we can to help her." All of a sudden I hear the alarm go off on the monitor to alert us that my mom's O2 stats dropped down to 73% and kept going down. Dr. Price and Dr. Perry rush into action and I hear Dr. Price say "Nurse I need an intubation kit and page respiratory stat!" Dr. Perry does a quick neuro exam after Dr. Price turns my mom's O2 cannula up to 10 liters. I try to rush over there but Josh holds me back saying "Tal, you cant help them with this, you know you cant work on family." I try to get out of Josh's grip so I can at least stand at the foot of the bed and hold my mom's feet so she knows I'm there and I beg Josh, "Please let me go Josh so I can be with her so she knows I'm there!" Josh responds with, "Tal, she knows your here and if you want them to do there best work you cant be in the way." I finally stop trying to get out of Josh's arms and just let him hold me as I soak his scrub top with my tears because I'm scared out of my mind that I'm gonna lose her. I hear Dr. Price say, "I need to put a chest tube in, nurse please get that now!" Right after Dr. Price said that the respiratory therapist, Sean Mitchell comes and helps intubate my mom and helps put the chest tube in. Within a few minutes she's more stable so Dr. Price, Dr. Kirkson, Dr. Link and Dr. Perry come up to me to have me sign the consent forms so they can get her into the OR while she's stable enough to move her. After getting my signatures they let me walk with them and the OR nurses that are wheeling my mom's stretcher to the doors of OR 2 and the last thing I see before the door closes to the OR is my mom's peaceful looking face.