Comilla Sasson has thought a lot about her own death in the past year. When Sasson, a Chicago native, arrived at the University of Colorado Hospital as a researcher, teacher and physician three years ago, her work wasn’t personal. In her role as an attending emergency room physician, she would set the broken bones and stitch up the deep gashes. She also dealt with her fair share of death, working alongside other ER docs as the first line of care for the most brutal injuries and pernicious maladies.
But all of that training, all of that time among the wounded and the dying, didn’t affect her as deeply as when the patients started streaming in to the ER on July 20. Those seemingly endless bullet wounds took a toll on patient and doctor alike; that lost blood robbed Sasson of a basic sense of safety and permanence.
“It’s that sense of your own mortality that you take for granted until it hits you in the face,” Sasson said, nearly a year after she treated those first victims of the rampage at the Century Aurora 16 theater. “My sense of mortality was never that real until that night. It’s hard to put my finger on it.”
The loss defies exact measures and precise words, but Sasson can still feel its effect when she’s working a shift in the ER. It pops up when she hears word of an incoming injury on the radio during an overnight shift. It colors her basic vocabulary – phrases like “mental health” and “gun control” now carry an entirely different weight, a context forged by tragedy.
“We hear a gunshot come in over the radio. All of us, we all go, ‘Oh no, not again.’ There’s still that little sense of, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re up, you can do this,’” Sasson said. “There’s a little bit more anxiety, working with the same group of people. Hearing something over the radio and thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s going to come in the door.’”
The first calls about a massacre at an Aurora movie theater came in shortly after Sasson had started her shift at 11 p.m. on July 19, 2012. Within hours, Sasson and her colleagues were treating more than 20 victims with a wide range of injuries. When she talked to members of the press the next morning, she was still in a daze. Sasson noted she’d never seen so many bullet wounds at once.
In the hours, days and weeks that followed, Sasson found she had lost a very basic sense of security. Her baseline had changed, and the lessons seemed almost cliché: Life is fleeting, live in the moment, don’t take any moment for granted. They were truths that reformed how Sasson approached her job.
“As (ER) docs, we normally don’t go and find out what happened to our patients,” she said, adding that she’s followed up with those who arrived at the University of Colorado Hospital last summer. “I think that’s something that I’ve actually gained. I’ve learned how to be a better doctor.”
Her role as a doctor, a teacher and a member of the Aurora community has taken on a more personal dimension. She’s determined to stay in the city, to maintain the bonds she built in the wake of tragedy. These are the gifts that have come with a sense of her own mortality.
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: The personal toll
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: The physical toll
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: The emotional toll
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Our identity
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Our city
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Our children
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Our community
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Ourselves
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Message triggers a new attitude toward guns
7.20.2012 THE PRICE WE PAID: Q&A with Gov. John Hickenlooper
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