Warning...Depressing and Morbid Post Ahead

Well, the last few weeks have been very rough at work. We rotated positions, which happens every six months, and I am now a floater again. My main responsibilities are to my cancer patients, the LTAC, and then to the hospital, if I have extra time. In these first two weeks, most of my time has been spent on the LTAC, where EVERYONE IS DYING!

Working with old people who have dysphagia, we know that death is a very real possibility. However, it is very rarely staring at us at the end of the hall. In the last two weeks on the LTAC, two of my patients have died, one has coded and gone back on the ventilator, and one has aspirated and gone back on the ventilator. Ick...

I was on the unit when one of my patients died. Though she was 85, her family had still not decided to make her a DNR - Do Not Resuscitate. Friends, I highly encourage you to discuss "code status" with your parents and loved ones. When an older person codes and is resuscitated, the physical trauma their body endures is horrific and they usually don't survive anyway.

So, when my patient coded, they attempted to resuscitate her; they gave her CPR and shocked her heart. She had a trach, and from my position in the nurses station, I could hear the air rushing out of it every time they compressed her chest. It was the most awful sound. They had to continue resuscitating her until her family could be reached. The case manager makes those calls..."Mrs. XXX, your mother's heart stopped and we are trying to revive her. But you need to come now because she is not going to survive."

When they finally stopped, everyone in the nurses station just sat there. My patient was the second person to die on the unit during that week. It was just too much. Though I never really had any meaningful interaction with my patient (she'd had a stroke and was quite unarousable), hearing the air rushing out and knowing the physical trauma her body went through really shook me up.

I went to the chapel in our building and prayed and cried. She wasn't my family, I didn't really know her, but she was my patient. Being a Catholic, I know she is in a better place. Unfortunately, that only makes it a little easier to deal with.