what are the happiest and saddest things you've seen?

hi goats!

re: your happiest moment, i too love when someone w/a mental disorder 'gets it' and has a lightbulb moment.

and re: your saddest moment; as a hospice nurse, i see far too frequently, the dying person CHOOSING to die when their loved one is not present. and i always take their lead. if i see my pt starting to get antsy or anxious, i shoo the family off. and it's usually within a couple of hrs that they pass away. i know it's frustrating for the family, since they wanted to be there when the time came. but i need to follow my pt's cues. in hindsight, i think most of my saddest moments revolve around those couples that were married for sev'l decades.....

leslie

Mine was a happy and sad at the same time. A patient who was in the hospital for over a month and very sick in ICU for the entire time. He had some abdominal surgery early during his stay. His last night he was in a great deal of pain and was going to die due to infection from dead gut. He was already on IV medications to maintain life so was not a surgical candidate realistically but was not turned down. I spoke with the doctors and their opinion was that he would not survive the OR..less than a 5% chance of survival and he was going to die one way or another very soon..probably tonight. I called his wife then told him what the doctors had told me. His wife was coming to the hospital to be with him and I talked to her once she arrived and she talked to the doctors. I medicated him for pain while his wife was driving to the hospital. I had a brief chat with both of them, made him as comfortable as possible and let them alone for about 45 minutes. They were both native americans and had stong beliefs about death and this was his time. He was taken off the ventilator and off all support medications except for pain. He shed a tear and mouthed thank you to me after I had arranged for his wishes to die with his wife at his side instead of in an operating room.

Death with dignity happens rarely in ICU setting.

Happiest.......births

Saddest........all the children whose deaths I've had to be a part of.

happiest- was the moment I decided to be a nurse. My son got RSV when he was about a month old and we were in the hospital for a long time, he was fighting to breath. At one point the alarms started going off and a nurse ran in and did a whole bunch of stuff to him at the time I had no idea what she was doing, his O2 sat. shot back up and he regained color. She sat and talked with me the rest of the night. She was a student nurse. She worked with us everynight untill he was released. That nurse was like an angel to me and I wanted to be able to help people in the same way. My son is 3 now and besides asthma is very healthy and wild.

Saddest- first rotation in ER, I saw a pedi pt die. I cried for a week. I kept thinking of my children and as I watched her parents cry, it was like I could feel their pain.

Happiest:

new families being born daily (I work OB). It brings me happiness you can't describe to be part of this joyful occasion in others' lives.

Saddest:

babies dying in the womb or just afterward, for whatever reason. Hopes/dreams dying with them. Definately heart-wrenching.

Happiest: Getting to sign 'RN' after my name for the first time! But as for patients, happiest was seeing a very depressed, hopeless, kid who had been horribly bullied in school bury his head in the fur of our pet therapy dog and giggle when she licked his face.

Saddest: helping one of our very young pediatric patients take her bath and discovering herpatic blisters on her private areas from abuse.

Happiest: Halloween in the NICU! Several years back, I dressed my primary patient up in a Harry Potter costume, complete with taped up glasses and a Duoderm scar on his forehead. He weighed about 2-3 pounds at the time and had recently come off the ventilator. Nurses from other units were coming up and asking if they could "please come in and see the Harry Potter baby" they heard about. It was all over the hospital!!! This baby had been so small and sick at birth (

Saddest: The night a baby who was awaiting heart surgery passed away on the unit. She had been discharged home with mom as a normal newborn, but her mother could tell something was wrong. She took her to the pediatrician every day for the first week she was home, insisting that the baby was sick, so finally they did an ECHO - and then admitted her for a severe heart defect. Unfortunately, she had been exposed to influenza during that one week at home, and it was more than her heart, lungs, and immune system could handle. Mom had done EVERYTHING right and had been such a good advocate for her daughter...but she didn't believe it. She felt guilty for the baby getting influenza and for not getting the doctors to take her seriously earlier. She was screaming, "I killed my baby!" and blaming herself after the death. I think every single person on the unit that night was crying.

WOW! almost everyone's happy stories are baby related! they really are awfully special, aren't they?

Not a happy or saddest moment. Just a thought on the posts. I had chosen not to work in PEDS because I didn't want to see any children sick or any children dying. During my pediatric rotation in LPN school working with children at a Childcare Center and studying PEDS (which was so interesting) I changed my mind and decided I could work there. But now after reading these posts, I don't know if I can handle it emotionally. So, I"m kind of back where I started.

WOW! almost everyone's happy stories are baby related! they really are awfully special aren't they?[/quote']

Yep, have to add my own. Happiest was during my OB clinical, assisting in a delivery. The couple had had five miscarriages in as many years; the mother had a rare blood disease and was never able to carry a baby to term. I was there when she delivered a full-term, healthy, beautiful baby boy.

Dad was a super-macho strapping cowboy dude. When he first saw his son, he broke down in gaping sobs of happiness so startling that within minutes, there was not a dry eye in the room.

I am not a big "kid person," don't have or want kids of my own, and have never been inclined to go into any sort of mother-baby or pediatric nursing. So I was just sort of trying to remain stoic, do my job, and not get too involved emotionally. But that family just touched my heart, and it remains one of those moments that defines why I just can't imagine NOT being a nurse.

Saddest moment was just recently -- a couple in their mid 40's was going home after a dinner celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. Their daughter had just been accepted to a prestigious college on an athletic scholarship and they were on top of the world. The husband began having chest pain, and tried to shake it off as heartburn, but the wife insisted he come to ER.

He had no medical history and minimal risk factors, but it turned out he had a large dissecting thoracic aortic aneurysm that required emergent surgery. He was my patient on CCU. When the surgeon came in to explain the diagnosis and gravity of the situation, they were (understandably) hysterical with fear and shock. There was just nothing I could think of to say to make it any easier for them -- it was a nightmare.

He did come through surgery and is slowly recovering. Still, their lives will never be the same and I cannot imagine the horror of the whole experience.