Compassionate Support, for your patients and yourself.

CrufflerJJ, BSN, RN, EMT-P · Jun 29, 2009

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I've been around folks dying since ~1988 (as an EMT & Paramedic), but it always seems rougher with babies & children. I still recall the sour milk taste from when I did mouth-to-mouth on a pedi SIDS baby many moons ago, just down the road from where I live. I remember working on the 2 little girls hit & killed by the drunk driver who fled the scene.

It's MUCH harder for me to care for dying little ones (especially since I became a father) than it is to say "goodbye" to an elderly full arrest patient.

I salute anybody who can do your job - Thanks again!

nocheapones · Jul 4, 2009

I'm not a nurse yet. I'm not even in nursing school yet. But I am a mom who's had one baby in the NICU and another stillborn at 36 weeks. My oldest was born at 34 weeks, was very healthy. And I remember looking around in the NICU, happy as a clam really, because my son was just there out of precaution. Looking back, I was so very naive. It makes me shudder, and I feel so incredibly blessed, that I had the luxury of being so naive during that time. Because now I know, after having my stillborn son, what those parents were feeling in your NICU. I had experiences with different varieties of nurses. You seem like the ones who inspired me to take this path that I'm on now so that someday I can too be some help during the worst day of someone's life. And your article made me happy for a variety of reasons. One, because obviously you care. Alot. And sometimes, after losing a baby, it kinda feels like nobody cares. Like it didn't count. Do you know what I mean? Well, anyway... your article has given me hope that I can get to the place that you are at. While I want so badly to be a nurse and to support people no matter what, including times like these that you have mentioned, I am so terrified of how I will be able to deal with it. So THANK YOU, because you have really inspired me to believe that while it may be a bit of a difficult road, I can get there too.

mama_d, BSN, RN · Jul 5, 2009

Before I got together with my husband, he and his ex had a baby who was stillborn. He was so traumatized by the experience that there has only been one time that he really talked to me about it. They knew that there was little hope when she went into the hospital, and that was horrible, but the way he describes the staff treating them still makes me so very angry. She was seventeen, and had an undiagnosed incompetent cervix. He said that the staff basically abandoned them emotionally, made no acknowledgment of the difficulty of the situation, and even refused to turn off the alarms on the monitoring equipment in the room, leaving them to hear the "blip blip blip" of her heart tones slow until they stopped.

I wish that they would have had a nurse like you to help them through their little girl's death.

sunkissed75, CNA · Jul 19, 2009

My baby was very sick when he was a week old. He had meningitis and almost died. He was in the hospital for two weeks and I was with him around the clock. I got to meet a lot of other parents. Parents with very, very sick babies. The better my baby got, the worse I'd feel around these other parents whose babies would never get better. The day we left the hospital was bitter sweet. I was so happy to be taking my baby home. And yet I felt such sadness and guilt for the babies that would spend the rest of their days in the hospital and for the parents who would never get to enjoy their babies in their own home. Even now, almost five years later, my throat hurts just thinking about those families. People take healthy babies for granted.

The day I decided to take the leap into nursing, my nurses during that ordeal were in forefront of my mind. So full of compassion and warmth they were. And with real love for their little patients. I always wondered what it was like for them emotionaly having to deal with babies who they tried to save and couldn't. The floor I was on was full of art and furniture donated in the memory of this baby or that baby. So many babies who didn't have a chance. I don't know how those nurses did/do it. They are so special...and so important to families going through such a tragedy. Thank you so much for your story, kanarooyou, and thank you for being the kind of nurse that you are. I know from experience, families appreciate your compassion.

Trishalishus, PhD, CNS · Jul 27, 2009

What a (selfish) shame that you are not Australian.

I work in aged care and we lose a resident every few weeks. We all line up in a kind of funerary cortège to escort their body to the funeral parlour truck and say goodbye, many of us aloud. The family is very rarely present.

I miss the ones I have grown to love - and I often think of them - but a death doesn't necessarily make me feel sad - because they have lived their lives, run their race, had careers, raised their families, had grandkids, retired and gone fishing - the stories I've heard...

I couldn't do what you do. I salute you - may you always keep that sweet strength.