Looking at illness, pain, disaster is not the same as being "in" it. I have only been hospitalized one time in my life and learned that lesson well. If you have a limb blown off suddenly, you aren't going to be asking anyone anything, you are going to be in shock and, if you are conscious or "thinking" at all, are going to be hoping the pain stops soon, that someone, anyone is helping and otherwise be very confused. You did read about the woman that tried to stand and help when she herself had been gravely injured and she fell down again? You aren't going to be thinking clearly, aren't going to know what is going on, won't identify the blood and what's going on with it happening to you. Your mind will shield you from anything that might distract from your body getting help.

Most of the "strangers" at the scene were medical personnel and/or loved ones one was with and others like them. If I'd let my mother care for me I would not mind another mother caring for me. With so many gravely hurt, not many died because there were so many medical personnel on the scene.

When we look "at" something, a death or illness of a love-one, etc. we weave our own stories, based on our own feelings and fears but that's not based on the actual experience.

I was always terrified that I'd be hospitalized, terrified of being anesthetized, of not being in "control". . .until my appendix burst. My mind and thinking got really really narrow then, wanting the pain to stop :-) and when they finally figured out (5 hours later!) what was wrong and could give me pain killers (couldn't until they knew what was causing the problem), they were explaining to me (after the pain killer) about the operation and what was going on and it was all fine with me! Not like I could jump up and do anything about it I spent a week in the hospital, several months later, on IV drip antibiotics, and, with the exception of a handful of moments that were scary to me, I was pretty bored, pretty involved in my fantasy/sci-fi three book series I was reading.

I don't panic as much anymore or get anxious when a loved one has a medical emergency or I hear/read about one; it isn't about "me" and that person isn't experiencing what I am thinking/feeling, not being in that emergency myself. When I was in college, a good friend was raped and murdered one night. I remember my mind going over and over that, trying to imagine it. It was only after I'd been in the hospital, been in an actual emergency that I understood the horror of being raped and murder is mostly in the thinking about it, not the actual happening of it. When someone dies, the rest of us are left with our thoughts and feelings about it, the deceased is not. A lot of my memory of my parents is about their last days and their dying and the horror of it to me. I comfort myself remembering that my thinking about it is not the same as my experiencing it. The map is not the territory.