What is the worst hardship/story you have ever seen/heard in your nursing career?

[succinate]

As nurses, we get to know our patients intimately. So I'm asking this question: what was the worst hardship you have ever heard about that your patient has gone through? Abuse? Torment? Homelessness? AIDS? Trauma? Personal illness? Children with no parents?

Anything. I would love to hear your stories.

[BSNbeauty, BSN, RN]

12 year old admitted to Labor and Delivery to find out she's pregnant. Pregancy was a result from her being raped by her brother. Very sad.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

A woman who suffered fetal demise who immediately got pregnant with twins....found one of her newborns not breathing....watching her say goodbye to her second baby within on year was heart breaking.

An Asian couple brought in their newborn who has had diarrhea and vomiting for days. They had been coining and cupping the baby as is their tradition....they spoke no English....she was so dehydrated that when they walked up to triage I thought the baby was deceased. We attempted resuscitation and coded this baby for HOURS...only to lose her. We got her back until the flight crew arrived when she coded again. The grief of the parents was palpable.

The grandchild of a co-worker stood up under a table saw in the days before they had guards on them. I will NEVER forget that day.

[RNperdiem, RN]

Trauma, burns and neurological devastation are tragic. I see them plenty. One totally different sort of betrayal sticks in my mind years later.

A woman was admitted to our unit for broken bones after a car accident. She gets a phone call from her sister telling her that her son saw her hospitalization as an opportunity to sell everything of value in the house for a big drug binge. He totally sold anything he could. This poor woman had problems far greater than femur fractures.

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

30something male who had AIDS, renounced citizenship in his own country to get refugee status in a neighboring country in order to have a chance to come here (theoretically for treatment? The disease was in his brain and it was hard to figure out his motives for coming to the US), only to arrive here just in time to spend his last weeks dying alone. No family or friends and no ability to contact anyone back "home". No way to get his body back to his people, as he renounced citizenship in one country (so they would not claim him) and was refugee status in another country that was war-torn and had little to no government and thus no record of him.

[NutmeggeRN, BSN]

All of the above, and more. I had a guy whose brother slept under his bed in the hospital at every admission because neither of them had homes. We ordered him trays in the name of people who were NPO.

The saddest ones, though, were back in the day of the early AIDS epidemic. I posted this on another thread last year.

I'm old enough that I worked ICU when the AIDS epidemic was just beginning, and I was in the San Francisco-Seattle axis where we had a lot of gay patients anyway. I must say that it was a time when I was not proud of a lot of my colleagues. I would take my patient assignment of some poor man with what was then a fatal pneumocystis pneumonia (thank god we have better treatment now) and soon a fearful face would peek around the door with the unspoken question: Would this nurse let me in to see my lover who is dying? So many wouldn't, would shoo them away saying, "Family only!" as if the patient would have any family members who would even acknowledge his existence. It absolutely broke my heart. "Please come in," I would say. "I'm sure he'd be so happy to have you here. Would you like to help me bathe him?" "Can I?" "Of course you can, I'm sure he'd prefer you to me at this point!" The tenderness between these guys was indescribable.

I had one experience, among so many, that was particularly heartbreaking. I was floated to a general surgery floor for a coupla summer days and for some reason we had a man with pulmonary failure on the "hot" side of the house, where the sun just baked the rooms all afternoon and no amount of air-conditioning would keep up with it. He wasn't my patient but I covered him when his nurse went to lunch, and his light went on. "Hey, Jen's at lunch. I'm GrnTea, what can I do for you?" He was lying in bed with the oxygen on, sweating and breathing with difficulty, and he said, "I'm just so hot. Can you help me?" So I got a basin of ice chips and alcohol (remember that? We did that before we had cooling blankets) and some washcloths and started to swab him down. And he started to cry. I stopped, startled, said, "What? What? Am I hurting you?" and he wept and wept and said (and this is where I start to cry now and every time I think of this story, thirty years later), "Nobody has touched me for three weeks." That poor man, in the hospital sick as a dog and knowing he was probably going to die very soon, and not one nurse had helped him bathe or eat or turn as he got weaker and weaker. It broke my heart.

The next day I went in and asked to care for him again. He had been found dead on the floor of his room, having taken off his oxygen to go to the bathroom, probably because he thought nobody would answer his light, and probably desaturated enough to pass out. And they didn't find him until change of shift because nobody looked in on him all night.

Bless you for being the caring person we all should strive to be.

[JesusKeepMe]

While working as an RN on a girls psych unit, I came across a young lady who seemed somewhat odd to me. She was very shy and reserved, withdrawn, didn't seem to function at her age level. She had no hx of hearing issues, but she spoke as though she was deaf. She also had no concept of hygiene, she wouldn't know to wear a tampon or a pad during her cycle, so the other girls would tease and taunt her. Come to find out, she had been isolated from the world for many years, locked in a room, and used as a sex slave by the men in her family for many years. Really hurt my heart because this young lady would never be 'normal' because of what these sadistic bums did to her for all those years.

[JesusKeepMe]

He isn't forgotten, you remember him, now we know of him as well through your story. His memory lives on. Thanks for sharing.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

A fifty-something year old woman who didn't do well post-op; septic and swirling the drain. Her sister sat at her bedside for hours and told me stories about this woman's career as a "journalist" in one war-torn hell-hole after another. In her late 40s, she came home to the US, got fell in love and got married for the first time. Within a week of the wedding, her husband quit his job and settled down to be supported. He expected her to wait on him hand and foot after working all day to earn a living for both of them. Did I mention that he hadn't bothered to visit since the day of her surgery? It seemed that her semi-retirement back in the US was a miserable experience except for her little dog. She'd never been able to have pets while traveling, but finally adopted a little dog. She had his picture at her bedside and would light up whenever anyone asked about it.

The impossible happened, and my patient rallied. She was well on the mend and we were discussing placement versus the possibilities of discharge to home. Her husband showed up for the family conference. I don't remember the details of the family conference, or what was decided. I do remember her husband asking to spend some time alone with her, and I gracefully bowed out of the room, after making sure she was comfortable. But her monitor alarms started going off, and I had to intervene -- I enetered the room just in time to hear her husband say to her, "That's right. I killed your dog. I could't wait to get home and kill that little ****."

[Sugarcoma, RN]

So many horrible stories it is hard to choose. From those whose horrors were self-inflicted to those who did nothing to earn their suffering. We had a young mother, drug addict, left her stash out and her 2 year old found it. 2 year old with anoxic brain damage, chronic trach and vent and seizures. I really wanted to hate that woman, but the guilt she suffered from was horrific. No one could come close to punishing her as hard as she herself did. (mom was patient not baby so maybe that made it easier for me to feel badly for her).

22 year old texting while driving. Ran into the back end of a flat bed. D/Ced to a neuro chronic care facility as a vegetable.

An exhausted mother of twins who fell asleep and her 18 month old babies managed to wander outside while unsupervised. One fell into the pool and drowned.

Really wanted to hate these people as technically it was their own fault. I myself have suffered from lapses in judgement. By the grace of God I have not had to pay so high a price for mine.

The 40 year old mother of two pre-teens. No medical history to speak of outside of childbirth. Life-long non-smoker. Came to ER with SOB. Diagnosed with end stage small cell lung CA. Died two days later leaving her family absolutely stunned.

50 year old man with DIB. Pulmonary fibrosis of unknown origin. Dead in 5 days.

Multiple people who have come to ER with vague complaints of HA's or Ab pain etc. only to find out they were riddled with cancer. It is awful watching someone go downhill so quickly and be completely aware of it the whole time.

For me some of the saddest patients are the little old men and women clearly in the throes of dementia. Usually live alone. Family noticing something is off. You can tell when you do their neuro exams that they are aware and trying to hide their deficits. This breaks my heart. They are so proud. Won't ask for help for anything. I recently had one who fell on his way to the bathroom. He had been watching us and figured out how to turn off the bed alarm!!! He laid on the floor and said nothing. I found him during my rounds. While we were initiating post-fall protocol he urgently said to the aide "Honey please hand me my pants, right now! I need them!!." The aide got his pants for him and he proceeded to take out his wallet, pull out two twenties and beg us both to not tell anyone in exchange for the cash. I so wish these people were not aware of what is happening to them. Just breaks my heart.

[LVN2RNMom, ASN, BSN, LVN]

During sub-acute clinicals there were several heart felt stories....like the beautiful, young mother pregnant with her 1st baby now in a seizured out due to pre-eclampsia, several of the men there were child molesters who tried to OD on drugs but ended up being "saved" and now living in a sub-acute facility and one of the men had his wife & kids visit often. Another man was a handsome, young vet who became a loan officer (when real estate hit highs in 2000's) then went to a party with fiancé, got too high & tried swimming in the pool but nearly drowned in the process and is living in a sub-acute facility. I have seen many cancer patients including myself & my family and it is something that it is indescribable. I thought I was being tortured to be present during my mothers passing but when it happened 2 yrs later to my step mother then again with my aunt, I came to realize that being present with someone during the death process is in the end a beautiful experience. It is something you will never forget.

[Sugarcoma, RN]

Grntea your story just breaks my heart. I was a pre-teen back in those days. My best friend had leukemia and for a year she had to receive thrice weekly massive transfusions. I am sure you know where I am going with this. Her official diagnosis was ARC and we had no idea it was AIDS. I have talked to her mother at length about this. The doctors presented it as a complication of her leukemia that had "taken out her immune system." She ended up in one of those units. Didn't matter that she was a child they were all housed together. The whole unit was men, and children and some adults that I recognized from the hem/onc clinic. Mostly hemophiliacs. Again we were told that it was a special unit for people with "low immunity." We got 5 minute hourly visits after donning what was just short of a hazmat suit. We never questioned it. It was very similar to the"blue rooms" on the Bone Marrow unit so it seemed legit to us.

After visiting, we would go back and sit in the waiting room. I saw plenty of men begging someone for information about their loved ones or begging family to lie and say they were relatives. Lots of people being escorted out by security. I didn't understand it then.

We were never questioned. Myself, my family, neighbors, even her teacher, none of whom were blood relatives, were ever restricted;we just had to be accompanied by one of her parents.

[LVN2RNMom, ASN, BSN, LVN]

I forgot to add the vet did this after losing his job when the real estate market crashed. He had plenty of pictures of his "old days" and he was once a very handsome man with a beautiful fiancé who had everything to look forward to.