Death messed with the wrong nurse...

amoLucia · Dec 11, 2013

??? I think I'm missing something with this cartoon.

imintrouble, BSN, RN · Dec 11, 2013

It has been my experience that no medical staff can save a person when it's their time to die. Wrong nurse or not. Fighter or not. Brilliant or not.

I know it's just a cartoon, but it took me years to get over myself when it came to my pt dying. My "I missed something". "There's something I should have caught". "I could have done more".

People die. Death is not the enemy.

Ok, the wet blanket has removed herself.

FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I · Dec 11, 2013

I agree that death is not our enemy. However, when it happens suddenly to a person close to you, then it's a shock. Anyway, I have prepared many deceased people for the mortician like many of you. But when I was a patient in the progressive care unit that connected to the ICU, a 9 yo boy was admitted into the ICU itself. He was the only survivor of a head-on crash between a motorcycle and an SUV. Nobody was wearing a seatbelt so everyone got ejected.

The head nurse was very LOUD, and monitored the boy. I think nobody expected him to live. I heard everything the LOUD nurse said before he died, and even when she announced; "He's gone." Then she asked her staff if everyone was okay before they took him down to the morgue. I was up the entire night by what I had heard. It upset me so much. I didn't even want to be a patient in the hospital anymore, so after I was discharged back to the assisted living facility where I lived, I asked my doctor to put me in hospice care. I was sick enough to receive it, but I obviously recovered.

We now have a group of hospitalists at our hospital, and I was recently in there with pneumonia and a UTI, but received such excellent care, I was discharged to recover at home. I have had pneumonia 12 times, and this is the first time the stay was so short. I applaud the efficiency of their care even though I am still recovering at home.

Mandychelle79, ASN, RN · Dec 12, 2013

My favorite death story was told to me by someone very close to me--- As a nurse in a nursing home, this nurse was in charge of calling families when their love one passed. One day Mr. Smith (name changed, and I really dont know what the mans name was) passed away, and she was calling to alert the family when one of the cna's ran up and said but but but... hes not dead, he was in his room talking to them ( they were starting post mortem care) so of course they called an ambulance and one or two more times he "died", No bp, pulse or resps, they would shake him, call his name and he would come back. Turns out his bladder was so full that it was causing him to code and the movement was alleviating some of the pressure and he would come to.

SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN · Dec 12, 2013

Mandychelle79 said:
Turns out his bladder was so full that it was causing him to code and the movement was alleviating some of the pressure and he would come to.

...someone, please explain the underlying pathology in this case. I mean, I've said before that I have to pee or I'll die, but I wasn't serious....

mskeaton90 · Dec 12, 2013

im loving the cartoon , no experience yet on my end but that bladder story :-)

NutmeggeRN, BSN · Dec 12, 2013

amoLucia said:
??? I think I'm missing something with this cartoon.

The nurse scared away the grim reaper, preventing death....

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jan 7, 2014

Many years ago when my son was a guest of the pediatric ICU, they admitted a neonate from a rural hospital who had severe pulmonary hypertension. The baby arrived with the transport team accompanied by his father. His mother had suffered an intrapartum hemorrhage and was still at the rural hospital having undergone a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding. The PICU staff tried everything they could think of to ventilate this baby. Every time they put him on the vent he'd begin to set off high pressure alarms and desaturate. So the staff took turns hand-ventilating him... for hours. For some reason the QRS tone was audible and all of us could hear the beeps. When it became apparent that the unit didn't have the capacity to keep the baby alive, with the father's consent, they stopped bagging the baby. And we all were quite well aware of the slow drift to asystole as the monitor continued to beep in ever-diminishing cadence... and then stopped. One could literally have heard a pin drop on that unit. I'll remember it forever.