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Rape, Fear and the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner | Love Your Nursing Life | Bobbi McCarthy

Fear has crawled into my heart and its talons are gripping tighter…As I sit on my stool, hands in my lap, I silently scream to God to help me. I know that what this young woman is going to tell me is going to haunt me and I fear it. I’m waiting to hear the horrific details of my patient’s experience prior to running to our ER at 2am, half naked, bleeding and disoriented. I’ve been called in to be her SANE nurse. (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner). When I arrived at the ER I am met by a sheriff who was standing guard outside her room. “She is afraid they will return.”

I knock on the closed door and a scream of “no…no..” echoes from inside. I slowly open the door a crack and tell her, “I’m a nurse…I just want to come in and sit with you.” No reply, so I slowly enter the lit room and sit on the closest stool. She briefly looks at me from her spot on the floor and then a look of pain, fear and sadness distorts her face as a cry racks her body.

She is huddled in the corner of room 5 of my small rural emergency room. Her knees are drawn up to her forehead and her arms are tightly wound around them. She is rocking and continues the gut wrenching sobs that last for minutes. Dirt is caked in her hair and on her feet as well as smeared on her legs and arms. Her face is bruised and dried blood sits like a leaf on her left cheek. Her right eye is swollen. I want to go on the floor and hold her but I know that would send her over the edge…so I wait. I silently ask God for guidance, for intuition and for the words to give comfort. I also ask Him for strength to get through what I know is going to be horrific.

“My name is Bobbi and I was called in to take care of you…when you are ready you can get off the floor and sit on the bed if you want or we can talk while you stay on the floor, it’s up to you.”

She doesn’t move or utter a sound for what seems like an eternity. Finally she looks up at me and asks me, “Have you ever been raped?”

I take a deep breath and tell her “no, I have not.” She is measuring her words as she shifts her eyes to the floor. A tear escapes her left eye and misses her face altogether and splashes on the pale blue floor. She looks up at me and says, “I pray you never are.”

I will not share the details of the heinous act that happened to this young woman. My exam time with her was 6 hours. Her life touched mine in a profound and lasting way. She wrote me a letter 2 months after the rape and told me how grateful she was to me for my kindness and for my nursing skills; unknown to me at the time, she was a nursing student. She told me she had moved to another state with a relative and still wasn’t sleeping, but felt safe. She asked me to pray for her. She had dropped out of nursing school for now and wasn’t sure if she would return.

***

This was one of the rape cases I was called in for early in my career of SANE nursing. It has never left me. When you are a SANE nurse you have to hear the details of the rape in order to treat the injuries sustained and to know where to collect evidence from the victim’s body. You are placed in their shoes for their horror and sometimes it takes a long time to shake the feeling that it somehow happened to you…called vicarious trauma.

I honor the SANE nurses out there and the patients they serve.

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