I was a very young, too young DON at a care home. I was working late one night doing paperwork. I heard odd noises coming from outside my office. I went out to investigate and I saw Marjean, one of my fav's sitting under a tree rocking back and forth.
I asked what was wrong, she kept rocking telling me she was just gang raped on the pool table of the game room.
Marjean was a hard core, paranoid schizophrenic. It never happened, while we had a game room we had no pool table and, we had cameras in that room. Naw, it didn't happen but SHE totally believed it did, it was one of her hallucinations.
While it did not *really* happen, it did happen in her reality and she was going through the same emotions as a true rape victim would experience.
I finally got it, I finally understood. Hallucination or not, it was still real for her. I just sat with her under the tree rocking back and forth.
We ALL have one or more of those moments, what is yours?
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
When I worked oncology, I had this really sweet patient with ovarian cancer. On her first admission, her husband was by her side constantly, involved in her care. On her second, he was on the unit constantly but not so involved in her care. On her third admission, it was pretty obvious that he was involved with one of my colleagues -- and that the patient knew it. We were able to get that patient to home care, but the husband hired a home health nurse to take care of her . . . my colleague. The one he was involved with. I cannot even imagine the pain that poor woman knew, her husband and her nurse cheating on her in her own home.
After the death, my colleague came back to work with us as agency. She was quite open about her boyfriend, the widower of our former patient. She displayed the gifts he had given her -- some while our patient was still alive -- and expected us to rejoice with her when they got engaged. It's the ONLY time in my life I've ever told anyone I hoped she burned in hell. And that if he'll cheat WITH you, he'll cheat ON you.
And he did.
You know, I would never wish cancer on anyone; with all I've been through, I just wouldn't want anyone to go through that suffering.
This, however, is a different story. People who would do this to another person, someone who is facing his/her own demise no less, yeah, I wouldn't shed a tear if they died an agonizing death, and had to watch their spouse cheating on them.
The first was my first pediatric code. 4 year old drown in a swimming pool at a party. One of the "we only took our eyes off her for a second" scenario. After everything had been tried the doctor running the code asked me to go out and ask the parents if they wanted to come into the room before we stopped the code. The father ran to the room but the mother collapsed and asked me to help her into the room. I carried her in to say goodbye to her daughter.
The second was a code of a witnessed arrest at home. When they wheeled the patient into the ER one of my co-workers was doing compressions on his mother who had collapsed in front of him. We didn't get her back.
Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.
House fire teenager CPR in progress. They got a pulse back, intubated barely recognizable as ultimately it was a young teen smoking in the bathroom and fell asleep in the epicenter of the fire. I had the uncle, bilateral broken lower legs from jumping out the window with the brother who had burns and a broken arm. The brother looked familiar. I was an ED tech at the time who also cross trained to unit secretary. The most severe was the younger brother. General surgery and neurosurgery called in. Never saw these men run into this busy community ED...ever. Did a nuclear scan to see if any blood flow to the brain, emergency fasciotomy to relieve pressure of the swelling. The older brother looked familiar. I couldn't place it. Then the uncle asked me to call their mother. Oh my god. I know these boys. I know their mother. PD was sent to pick her up from the paid city EMS two towns over, she had no idea as paid uses a different radio channel than the county channel used by volunteer EMS and ALS dispatch. Her younger son, swollen, charred hair, barely recognizable as a human. I called the affilated burn center for transfer as the nuclear scan was positive for blood to brain.
Burn center called back. They refused transfer, admitted to the ED attending his chances were low and they didn't want it to affect their statistics. I never saw this petite woman so composed go bananas. How can you say the odds are not high enough to give a child a chance at survival?!? I was doing a paper on burn patients and resources at the time and had memorized burn center referral hotlines. I found a burn center in the next state willing to take him and someone willing to drive his mother. Helicopter and burn crew in the air within moments. Their resuscitation protocol relayed to the ED team and initiated. Neurosurgeon is not happy, livid when he finds out the affiliated burn center refused to accept the transfer. Pharmacy called for extra medicine, central supply called for the needed fluids, lab running specimens stat, two RRTs helping with art lines, vent management, ABGs, a wound care nurse from upstairs came down to help with dressings. Fire was at around. 3AM. He was out of house by 3:10, pulse restored by 3:15. On the way to the out of state burn center by 6am
Later that day we received word that he died in the burn icu. Mom had asked about organ donation but they were too swollen from the heat to be safely transferred.
The the next day the headline was that the affiliated burn center refused to accept the child and give him a chance. Would he have lived if they accepted transfer? Maybe not but he would have potentially been a their burn center by 4:30 am as it's not that far by medievac helicopter. Lots of executives speaking out. Lots of memos sent and policies clarified.
To to this day, nearly two decades later, I believe the anonymous source was that petite, quiet yet feisty ED attending physician. She had enough of the BS and a child lost a chance, and a mother had to leave the state to give her child that chance, albeit small, to survive.
Working as a Neonatal NP in a level 4 NICU, I've had several... But one of the worst by far was during my last pregnancy. Anyone in NICU can tell you that the worst time of our own pregnancies are 23-25 weeks, when the parents are given an option to try resuscitation if their child delivers, but the outcomes are often exceedingly poor. Opinions on what is right, moral or ethical abound, and everyone THINKS they know what they would do. I personally have always coped with those "what if" weeks by burying my head in the sand, ostrich-style, and praying until my own children were solidly in the land of the viable fetuses.
Except this time. This time, I cared for a lovely little fellow, who forced me to face my own worst fears. He delivered at 23 5/7 weeks to a set of loving parents who desperately wanted him. They'd had difficulty conceiving, but had no indication of trouble with this pregnancy until the night she precipitously delivered. They were shocked and stunned, surrounded by concerned family, as the NICU team discussed the realities of his care- oscillating ventilators, brain bleeds, sepsis, chronic lung disease, NEC- all possibilities for him. Unfortunately, this conversation happens almost daily where I work. What made this different?
This tiny child and my own tiny child shared, to the day, a due date. I scoured that chart, trying to find something, ANYTHING, that would make this mother different from me- some sort of proof that this couldn't, wouldn't happen to me! There wasn't any. They were "normal", doing everything right... And yet here they were.
I sat with the family and care team when the results of his second head sono came back- devastating, irreversible bleeding that would virtually ensure no chance at a normal life. We presented options- continue aggressive treatment, or withdraw support and allow him to die peacefully. They requested time to think.
Shortly thereafter, his nurse found me. The family had questions. They wanted brutal truth- what would happen, how would it look, sound, feel- if they chose to withdraw. I talked them through the process, carefully and honestly. I fielded questions from all the grandparents and friends holding this couple up, doing my best to address their fears and concerns. At one point, a grandfather grasped my arm tightly and said, "You're doing a good job. How many times have you had this conversation?" Too many. Way, way, too many. "I don't know how you can do this, especially like that," he said sadly, gesturing toward my belly, which I had been trying so desperately to conceal in oversized scrubs, hoping to spare the mother further pain. At that moment, I wasn't so sure about my job, either.
After a few minutes of privacy, the parents had made up their mind- they were going to let him go. However, in a twist from the usual, they decided against staying with him while he was passing. They wanted to hold him, love him, bathe him and then let him go- and let us extubate him once they were gone. They requested that I hold him, in their place, since we had been together since his admission.
What could I say? Of course I would do this for them. My coworkers reassured me I didn't have to- how would the family know, since they would be gone? But I couldn't betray a mother's trust like that. So in the stillness of his room, now empty of the many people who had loved him, I held that baby, rocked him and sang to him. I held him as his heart rate slowed and he became still, in striking dichotomy to the tiny active life inside my body... So much the same, and yet so very different. I cried on the top of his tiny, perfectly round head for the life he would not have, and prayed for both him and my own child, for the blessing of a healthy pregnancy, for deliverance from the pain his mother was feeling that day.
When it was over, and the bedside nurses took over his postmortem care, I called the family per their request, with a time of death. The grandfather who answered the phone said only, "Thanks you. Really. We just couldn't..." before the line went dead. Unlike many families who lose children in our unit, I never heard from them again.
He was certainly not the first, and also not the last, child I've been with through their end of life- nor even that I've held in the place of their parents. However, I will never be able to forget that baby, and that mother, who so very easily could have been me.
House fire teenager CPR in progress. They got a pulse back, intubated barely recognizable as ultimately it was a young teen smoking in the bathroom and fell asleep in the epicenter of the fire. I had the uncle, bilateral broken lower legs from jumping out the window with the brother who had burns and a broken arm. The brother looked familiar. I was an ED tech at the time who also cross trained to unit secretary. The most severe was the younger brother. General surgery and neurosurgery called in. Never saw these men run into this busy community ED...ever.
The first was my first pediatric code. 4 year old drown in a swimming pool at a party. One of the "we only took our eyes off her for a second" scenario. After everything had been tried the doctor running the code asked me to go out and ask the parents if they wanted to come into the room before we stopped the code. The father ran to the room but the mother collapsed and asked me to help her into the room. I carried her in to say goodbye to her daughter.
The second was a code of a witnessed arrest at home. When they wheeled the patient into the ER one of my co-workers was doing compressions on his mother who had collapsed in front of him. We didn't get her back.
...... I never went to another patient funeral after that.
Somewhere I have a couple of photos of "David" .. again, taken before privacy got so strict. His chin rests in his hand, big smile, how he will always be remembered.
First and only wake I went to for a patient (and I never went to a funeral at all), a woman in her 30's with young children. She had had nightmares in the weeks before her death, waking up yelling, "My kids! My kids!". I went to the wake with a couple other co-workers. Her 3 year old was running around and obviously did not understand what happened to her mother. She would run and then go to the casket and look down at her mother and seemed to be waiting for her to wake up.
I realized it would not be good to go to the wakes and/or funerals.
Hoo boy, I have a lot after 23 years. One that stands out to me is working on a maternity unit in a pretty isolated area (tertiary care center a 4 -6 hour med flight away) where we had a delivery of a 22 weeker with chorio infection in mom. Team would not come due to gestation.. Baby lived for 17 hours believe it or not...and I recall holding this baby in the night....being 24 weeks along with my own pregnancy. That baby cried as loud as a full term newborn. None of us could believe it. Mom got to the point of saying her goodbyes and didn't want to hold her anymore, so we took turns in the night, saying goodbye to her, cuddling her. After the peds said to just leave her on the counter so she would "get cold and die sooner."
Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
Hoo boy, I have a lot after 23 years. One that stands out to me is working on a maternity unit in a pretty isolated area (tertiary care center a 4 -6 hour med flight away) where we had a delivery of a 22 weeker with chorio infection in mom. Team would not come due to gestation.. Baby lived for 17 hours believe it or not...and I recall holding this baby in the night....being 24 weeks along with my own pregnancy. That baby cried as loud as a full term newborn. None of us could believe it. Mom got to the point of saying her goodbyes and didn't want to hold her anymore, so we took turns in the night, saying goodbye to her, cuddling her. After the peds said to just leave her on the counter so she would "get cold and die sooner."
I was a student nurse and this gentleman was one of my first patients. He was in his mid-nineties and delightful. He had scleroderma. I was helping him wash the places he couldn't reach.
We were chatting as we worked. He had been an international lawyer. His stories were fascinating. He and his late wife ad lived in many countries. I glanced at his toes and, to my horror, made a a sickening discovery. He was unaware. One of his toes had come off! I didn't know w hat to do. Finally, as I was about to tell him,.He.noticed. my dilemma. He told me to just pick it up in a washcloth and take it to the nurse. Fortunately, my instructor appeared at the door. Phew! She told me later that my reaction had been fine. I'm still not sure what the proper response would have been.
OCNRN63, RN
5,979 Posts
You know, I would never wish cancer on anyone; with all I've been through, I just wouldn't want anyone to go through that suffering.
This, however, is a different story. People who would do this to another person, someone who is facing his/her own demise no less, yeah, I wouldn't shed a tear if they died an agonizing death, and had to watch their spouse cheating on them.