Great Responsibility?

Confession: I am a thinker. Scratch that… I am an over thinker. I’ve spent the last few days reflecting (cough over thinking cough) about what happened on Monday night at DR. In Monday night’s post, I just relived the experience without much thought to what it meant for me to have had that experience. So sit back and enjoy the product of an overactive mind :). 

This is going to sound silly, but when James fell of the horse (let’s just call it “the incident”), the level of responsibility that I have really hit me. You never really think that those “here’s what you do if…” situations that you learn about in training will ever happen to you.  “The incident” made me realize that I will have to be prepared for anything and everything while on the job as an OT, and even now as a DR volunteer. I know that situations such as “the incident” are rare, but they do happen. I sincerely hope that there are courses in grad school about crisis management-sign me up for all of those please! Both people and horses can be unpredictable. Then you add  disabilities on top of that and you come out with a situation where, in reality, anything can happen. A rider with Autism could go into sensory overload and have a melt down. Conceptually, I realize this. It’s hard to imagine it actually happening to me… and it’s weird to think that it did happen, scary to think that it could happen again. 

I felt guilty after it happened; could I have done more and/or should I have done more? If so, then what could I have done? What else was there for me to do but jump out of the way, stricken with dead-fish syndrome. I guess it’s human nature to assume you’d be a hero in a crisis situation- or at least do something. After all, I was the oldest person in that team..even though the other 2 young ladies have been working with DR for a long time and they’ve had more experience with patients, I still felt like as the oldest, I should have been able to do more. Can you say first born mentality?! Was it my fault? Was I holding onto little James’ ankle as tightly as I normally do? I guess the answer here is that there is no answer. Crap happens. Luckily, the girl whose side he fell on was ready to catch him, and no one was hurt. 

Another scary thought is that James can’t talk… he wasn’t able to communicate that something wasn’t right, or that he was losing his balance. He simply just slid off the horse. I’d venture a guess that a good number of OT patients do not possess the ability to verbalize when something doesn’t feel right, or that they feel a seizure coming (for example). Even if they can, will they tell you in time for you to do something about it. I know the career field that I have chosen isn’t going to be glamorous most days, and I’m sure that there are times when I’l be scared and unsure. I’m glad, but not glad, that this happened to me and not someone else. Of course, I would never want any rider to fall off a horse, that would be cruel! But I am glad that this served as a reminder that some scary stuff is going to happen. 

I’d be a liar if I said that I wasn’t nervous to go back to the  barn tomorrow. I’m hoping that I’ve learned to be more calm during “crisis” situations like this one. I don’t want to forget this experience, but I don’t want it to hinder my work. In other words, I don’t want to shy away from doing my job because I’m fearful that this sort of thing might happen again!