Com'on, you got one...What is your heart wrenching moment?

[CrunchBerries]

Mine was....

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?

[CrunchBerries]

He may not really want to tell it. Put the pieces together. Peds + flight nurse (sounds to me a kid in critical condition) = a situation you may not wish to re-live as a nurse. Analogy. Think of a soldier returning home from war where he lost men and women close to him, and someone insists that he tell those stories. I think what he wrote was enough said.

Or, maybe not. I'm pretty sure he is fully capable of explaining that himself vs. discussing his story if that is how he felt.

[annie.rn]

I've previously posted but just thought of another memory. This memory is heart wrenching but in a beautiful way.

I took care of a hospice patient who was in the final weeks of a protracted battle with lymphoma. "Irene" was a beautiful person, both inside and out. She was at peace with dying and she glowed with a light that I've never seen in anybody before or since.

One day I noticed a small folding table set up in the corner of her room. The table was neatly stacked with cards, gift wrap and an assortment of small gifts.

Making small talk, I asked her if she was getting her Christmas wrapping done. Irene explained that these were not Christmas gifts. They were special gifts for the most special people in her life, to be given out upon her death.

These weren't gifts you could buy in a store. Irene had gone through all of her favorite possessions and she was in the process of wrapping each one so that she could give them away to her most beloved friends and family.

She showed me a small, shiny, colorful stone that she had collected in Arizona while hiking. She and her husband were passing through AZ on their way back home from CA where she'd spent two months receiving a bone marrow transplant.

Irene explained that the little rock had stood out from the others that day because of it's unique color. She carried it around in her pocket every day after that and it became a token of hope. She gave it to her sister, writing on the note that she wanted to share the hope that the rock had given her.

Irene explained that she was also making sure to write in each person's note about how much she loved them, what they meant to her and how they had touched her life.

Irene was a very special person. When you were in her presence she made you feel like you were the most important person in the room. She had every reason to be focused on herself but she never was. Instead, she wanted to know everything there was to know about you, your family, your pets, etc. I would have to redirect her several times in order to get a basic assessment done. Even then, after a few questions she would stop me with, "Enough about me already!".

I might be making her sound a little unbalanced but she was not. She was a woman living on borrowed time who already knew all she wanted to know about herself. Anything she might not have known she would have eternity to figure out. She could only be bothered now with others.

As cliche as it sounds, Irene was dying and she definitely knew how to live like it. In the short time I knew her, she made me feel more special and more appreciative of life than just about anyone else I'd ever met. I can only wish to someday be that giving of myself and that dignified when facing eternity.

was dying". Shearound her process.

[poppycat, ADN, BSN]

You don't want to hear mine. You really don't. Says the ex-pediatric flight nurse.

((Hugs))

I don't even want to imagine the things you've seen in that job. I couldn't do what you do.

[honeyforasalteyfish]

You are all amazing thank you so much for your service

[ThePsychWhisperer, BSN, MSN, APRN, NP]

I work in an ED and while I should be prepared for anything, pediatric codes tug at my heart strings. All the compressions on such a tiny body, and working it much longer than you should just because the next compression could be the one...and who wants to call time of death on a kid? I absolutely refuse to do pediatric codes, simply because I know I would turn into a blubbery mess, and be absolutely useless. All of us have a limit, whether we want to admit it or not...this is mine.

[ChickaBoom]

I can't bear to read any more of these today, but I think you guys are amazing for everything you've experienced.

I'm trying not to cry as i read these, since I have a reputation for being the crier... that's OK, I have sensitive heartstrings. But these are helping me to get ready to control myself on the floor, so thank you for sharing!

[emmy27]

Peds codes are always the hardest.

I think the one that gutted me the most was a SIDS baby, code was started on night shift and went on for ages even though the baby far gone even before EMS got there. Both parents were (understandably) hysterical and incoherent, which was hard, and most of the staff was in the code, but as I came in to clock in I passed the consultation room where the one old-enough-to-know-something-is-wrong-but-not-old-enough-to-really-understand and one just-old-enough-to-understand sisters had been left alone (charge RN in code, house super with hysterical parents). I got them teddy bears and juice (because what else can you do?) and sat with them while the littler one told me an elaborate story about how her baby brother was going to be okay because daddy could fix anything, and the older one just sat there hugging her silently with a thousand-yard-stare.

There have been a lot of rough moments in nursing, but the look in that little girl's eyes while she let her younger sister self-soothe about how it was going to be okay when she clearly knew it wasn't going to be okay will always haunt me.

[emmy27]

It took me two days to read this thread. I've shed some tears of my own. I am not a nurse yet- currently applying to schools and hoping to get in fall or sprin semester. I know this is my calling but these experiences have me wondering if I will be able to do it. Does it get easier with time? Also, do employers offer some kind of support- like counseling for you?

Thank you wonderful people for your service.

Many places offer EAP and sometimes in a particularly rough situation there will be a unit debriefing (particularly if anything went wrong or staff was visibly affected). But often the things that affect you the most are pretty individual. I was working in an ER "fast track" area once, where we see things that should be pretty quick in-and-out, and we had a patient who had just broken his arm falling off a stepladder while painting. Another nurse was helping me splint it, and we noticed the guy was weeping silently, so we asked if his arm was still hurting (he'd already been medicated).

He said no, but explained that the reason he had fallen is that he had answered his phone while on the ladder and it had been his wife telling him their son had just been KIA, and he had slipped while trying to climb down in his confusion and grief.

Someone I love was deployed at that time, as was the son of the nurse helping me. We kept it together long enough to finish his splint and comfort him, but that's not the kind of incident there's going to be an official debriefing for. We cried it out once we were out of the room and then got on with our shift. As a nurse you're privy to a lot of intense, private moments of grief, and some of them are going to resonate with you as an individual more than others.

[gibsongirl]

It's the cheerios thing.

[gibsongirl]

I could have done without that story. It's the only one that made me want to cry. I am grateful you shared it. I feel close to you, to the mother. I know nurses have an incredible gift that makes it possible to help people in the midst of their tragedies. What you did, very few could do and it made all the difference in the world. Just being there is all we can do sometimes. A little piece of your heart is in heaven.

[gibsongirl]

What is COB.

[jifferte, BSN, MSN, RN]

COB= Crust 'Ol Bat.