That one patient that haunts you.

[FancypantsRN]

Do you guys have one of those? I do. I took care of them pretty recently (about 1 month ago), but they creep into my head every day that I work now. They died way too young. It's one of those things where I feel I should have done more, should have recognized something sooner. There was nothing I could do really. Their s/sx were so seemingly benign and no one even suspected they would die.

This was not my first pt death btw, just the most strange one. Not just for me, but for all my coworkers as well. I am not sure how I am dealing with it, I guess I just am.

[Poi Dog]

There where quite a few who have left their footprints on my heart. I think about them sometimes and I feel a tug at my heart.

Miss F would say to me, "I love you bunches." When she passed I took it hard. She drove me insane with her many requests to be toileted every 5 minutes. How I would give anything to hear her say, "I need to go potty."

RIP Miss F, and Mr. M.

[Anisettes, BSN, RN]

Hard to narrow it down. 10 years in ER, 10+ in surgery/trauma surgery, there have been so many. But maybe the last 5 years have had more Dear God W-T-F ? moments than all the years combined though.

Working at the receiving hospital in Germany where the wounded US and Nato forces are sent from downrange - the sheer amount of, and the tragic waste of it all has been the hardest to handle for me.

Having one young life after another come thru the OR torn to absolute s***, missing multiple limbs, missing buttocks, open abdomens and exposed pelvic girdles. You prep all that damaged flesh and dress and place vacuum sponges and wonder how the hell this person is ever going to come back from this. All this loss and waste for what?

You have to turn it off people say, but every one of them is my daughter who is in the Army, every one of them is my son, a Marine. And I pray every day by the Grace of God, I don't see one of them being pulled out of the back of one of those Bluebird buses from Ramstein, and I mourn for the families of those that are. We are asking too much of too few and way too much is being sacrificed for too little gain. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel.

Yeah, you can't pick one, there are just too many.

[Poi Dog]

Recently a lil boy in pedi oncology. Cutest thing. Had no front teeth. He spoke very little English and would stand at his door and say "Attention, attention, attention......co-lu, co-lu and smile at us. He was repeating what he often heard over the intercolm "Attn, attn, attn code blue, code blue". Lost his battle with AML. He is missed dearly

The tears are flowing now

[applewhitern, BSN, RN]

18 year old who was "drinking" nyquil from the bottle, several apparently, plus other cold meds that contained acetaminophen. He died on a vent in ICU, merely because he had a cold and didn't know tylenol overdose could kill him. 9 year old whose father let her sit in the car while he cut down a large tree. The tree fell in the wrong direction and landed right smack on the car and crushed her. Okay, I could go on and on, but now I don't want to.....

[LoveMyBugs, BSN, CNA, RN]

During my preceptorship in the ED, we had a pediatric code come in, my preceptor thought it would be a good expereince for me to observe and participate if I could.

When they rolled in they were still doing CPR, the nurses running the code told me to take over compressions once she was on our gurney.

It was obvious to everyone in the room how this baby had died, not one area of her body did not have some sort of bruise on her, all in various stages of healing and for her age she was about 10-15 lbs underweight.

We worked on her for what felt like hours, maybe it was 45min to an hour the MD had tears in his eyes as he pronounced her.

I remeber baging up the clothes that we cut off of her and I remeber seeing that she had her toe nails painted pink, I remeber thinking maybe someone showed her they loved her by painting her nails.

Both dad and girlfriend were arressted and are still awaiting trial as they both claim they are inocent.

As a tech in the ED;

I remeber a baby who died from SIDS, we worked on him for a long time, I remeber catching mom as she colapsed, as the MD pronounced the baby, she fell asleep with him on the couch and thought it was her fault and was so over come with guilt and grief that she became our patient.

[Munch]

This extremely mild mannered man in his late 40's came in to the hospital with pancreatic cancer. There was nothing anyone can do treatment wise, the cancer has spread to his liver then his lungs. The family brought him in to see if we can make him comfortable and he had very low blood counts. I think anyone who works in the medical field knows how terrible pancreatic cancer is. He never made once complaint about how much pain he was in (he had a 100mcg fentanyl patch on and morphine was used for BTP. I don't think the morphine was very effective for his pain and many times I asked the MD to switch it to dilaudid or something else, but the doctor insisted the morphine was fine. This patient was ALWAYS wincing in pain but never complained and never did the "why me" speech(when he was lucid and and all through his "cancer career"). He had three children all in their teens, a son(who was the oldest) and two daughters(who all adored their "daddy" as they called him) and a wife who adored him as well.

I'll never forget this moment when the wife and youngest daughter went down to get something to eat...not sure where the son was. I went in to change his patch and his middle daughter was laying in the bed with him(yes she fit in the bed with him, when he was diagnosed he was 6'1 and about 180lbs and by this time he looked like a skeleton with skin draped over his bones, he was also jaundiced all over his body even the whites of his eyes were yellow), telling him how much he loved him, how he was the best father in the world and so on. It took all of my self control not to burst out into tears.

He died a few days later. This one really got to me because when he first came in, he was this big, strong, funny and nice man. He had meat on his bones and he just faded away. He died within 19 weeks of being diagnosed. I always think of his wife who on her own had to take care of three teenagers and how those teenagers father was robbed way too early from them.

[mskate]

a 19 year old girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time... she was shot 19 times.

[elthia]

The man with bone mets that broke through his sacral spine, and has hanging on the trapeze bar for dear life for hours at at time because no amount of pain meds, even the fentanyl drip wasn't touching his pain.

The meanest, cruelest, jerk of a man, who had a 75% chance of beating his cancer if he had been compliant and met his appointments, dying screaming the "black is coming to get me."

The man from Hawaii whose family covered his room in white flowers that smelled so beautiful to remind him of home. He was just dx with brain mets, and was wanting me to care for him and was so upset to find out I had just quit and it was my last day at that hospital.

The lady on a heparin gtt that was stable, steady on her feet, that fell hit her head, developed a brain bleed, and later herniated through her brain stem. We never knew why or how she fell, the nurse left her room 10 minutes before, she was next to the nurses station, I heard a thud, ran to the room and found her down. I know her nurse very well, and she is extremely thorough, and was devasted, the patient had just been to the bathroom, and was even found by the door to the room. The call light was on the bed.

[Katie5]

Life is precious:(

[NP Sam]

Wow, I hope this thread help us all complain less in life and be thankful more. Thanks for sharing.

[slackula]

I was working in a large NYC public hospital. The kind of place you see it all. One day, a fourteen year old was admitted to the floor I floated onto. He was vomiting after meals . His father was very controlling and it seemed to me, making his son repeat stories about how bad his mother was, she was a prostitute etc. I didn't like the way the dad spoke to me. I got bad vibes and told the charge nurse. I told security. They all thought the father was just really worried about his son. A few weeks later I was watching the news and there was a picture of the "father" and the "son". The boy had been abducted by this man. This was in 1980, no amber alerts, no milk carton pictures. I felt sick. I called the police number and spoke to the investigators. He was never found. I think about it sometimes if I drink to much. But I tell you this, I never doubt my own insights or gut feelings. I don't care who thinks I'm crazy. So other people have benefited.But what a terrible way to learn to trust yourself.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

there have been so many . . . .

the lawyer who beat leukemia, but died from an infiltrated iv. someone pushed his chemo through it and it extravasated, the area got infected and he died of sepsis. he was my first primary patient and was always so sweet to me, even when he was out of his mind with a temperature of 40 c.

the nasty old man who no one would take care of -- i was the new girl so i was stuck with him. he grew on me -- evidently i grew on him, too. he told me i was his favorite nurse. the day he died, i had to look through his old charts to find a next of kin listing . . . it was my grandmother. he was a distant cousin of mine!

the surgeon who suspected he might be hiv + and sent his blood off to the lab under a fictional patient's name. (back in the days when you could do that.) test came back positive, and the lab called the result to the listed physician -- who happened to be the surgeon. he was in the or doing a complicated bowel surgery when he got the message. he finished the surgery and the patient did well. the surgeon -- not so much. he died on our unit. i think everybody in the hospital must have come to visit him the last week of his life -- from the ceo to the janitor. i cry just thinking of it.

and many, many more . . . .