Let me start by apologizing right now about the morbid story here but I just need to vent a little. I work as a Pedi charge nurse as many of you know on a Neuro unit. We have many deaths on our unit unfortunately due to the severity of our kids. These deaths are generally expecteed, but one happened last night that really got to me and I need to sound off about it so please bear with me.
In our facility all the charge nurses respond to all codes on the floors. Well last night I was sitting and talking to my fellow nurses when the overhead call came in about the code on the 12th floor. I ran up the stairs there and went into the room where the code was going on. The crash cart was there and one of the residents was in the room. I looked at the Lifepac to see what rhythm the kid was in seeing as he was blue already and I noticed the kid was not even hooked up to the leads, hell the damn monitor was not even turned on. I grabbed the leads and hooked him up while cpr was being done. noone even thought to do that. I also noticed that h8is IV was still on the pump and only going at 20 cc/hr with about 10 cc oin the buretrol. I had someone get a bag of NS while more people came in and took the fluid off the pump and spiked the new bag. By this time more people had aririved and we progressed with the code. The child did not make it. The code was called and we all left the room. We were standing in the hall just looking in the room while the doc told the mom that her son was dead. She just screamed for us to please go back in there and work some more and bring back her son to us. he was only 6 years old, and was only in for a T&A.
I saw that noone from the kids floor was going in to clean the room or the body so another nurse from a different floor looked at each other and just nodded and we both went in the room to clean it and him up so the mom could see her soon. thankfully a few other nurses pitched in and helped. We got him and the room cleaned and prepped in record time so the mom could be with her baby.
This is by far not the first death , and not the first child I have watched die, but this I think was the hardest as my youngest son is the same age as this child. You know what the worst part is...after all that I still do not know this childs name...so please hug your kids today...no matter how old they are or how mad they make you. I Know that 8i rushed home and hugged mine real tight before they left for the first day of school today and I will hug them real tight when they get home.
And please pray for this unknown child and his family. Let his mom find the courage she is going to need. Thanks for allowing me to be a little teary eyed about this and vent about this child that died this morning. Bless all.
Dave
p.s. sorry about the bad grammer and spelling...hard to type with blurry vision.
