LLM Law Enforcement Academy Consulting

"I'm fine!  I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but my daughter can't! She never could!  Oh God! I am so mad I don't know what to do! I wanna know why!  I wanna know *why* Shelby's life is over!  I wanna know how that baby will *ever* know how wonderful his mother was!  Will he *ever* know what she went through for him!  Oh *God* I wanna know *why*? *Why*?  Lord, I wish I could understand!"    ~ M'Lynn ("Steel Magnolias") Before I lost such a big part of my life and my heart, I really had no understanding of grief and mourning. As a human b eing, I have empathy of course. So I felt such sadness for people who lost loved ones. But I didn't really "get it". You really can't unless you've been through it yourself. I would be with people who have experienced loss and they'd appear happy, they'd be laughing. And I would think, "Oh, good. They must be healing." Or I would see their posts o...

Courtney on a ventilator at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center I joke and use sarcasm as a coping mechanism. We all do something to get ourselves through tough times and unbearable pain. And that's what I do. And it works for me most of the time. But don't think for one second that I am not profoundly sad at least once a day. And it's more like many, many times a day. And not to make this pandemic about me but I will for just one minute so please indulge me. Seeing constant images of hospitals, nurses, doctors, ICUs, gloves, masks, gowns, electronic vital sign monitors...and, worst of all, ventilators is causing me such anxiety and trauma. I can smell the smells. I can hear the noises and the beeping. I know how to read all the machines, including the ventilator settings. I became an expert in reading Courtney's ventilator settings so I could watch for improvement. When you walk onto an ICU, all the patients' electronic vital sign monitors are displayed nex...