There but for the grace of....

elthia · Sep 8, 2011

A pt on a heparin drip got up and walked around after her nurse left her room. I was sitting at the nurses station and heard a crashing sound. She fell so hard she had a goose egg on the back of her skull. I remember holding c-spine when she began to vomit. She never woke up, and she herniated out through the brainstem. My coworker was devastated. I remember moving the call light off the bed when we put her on the bed to send her down for the CT scan. We have no idea how or why she fell.

misswhitney · Sep 8, 2011

An older man had MS and was slowly deteriorating. He said he had traveled pretty far all over the country to find something that would help him feel better. He was such a sweet gentleman. Makes me want to cry how fragile he was. I remember pulling off some skin when I was taking out his IV when he was going home. I felt so horrible; he already had so many skin tears. Then, his ride came was anxious to leave so I walked him downstairs and he grew tired. Luckily someone from Patient relations came by with a wheelchair. I gave him a hug as he got into the car and knew I would never forget him. I can only hope to be half the fighter he is.

xtxrn, ASN, RN · Sep 8, 2011

A pt on a heparin drip got up and walked around after her nurse left her room. I was sitting at the nurses station and heard a crashing sound. She fell so hard she had a goose egg on the back of her skull. I remember holding c-spine when she began to vomit. She never woke up, and she herniated out through the brainstem. My coworker was devastated. I remember moving the call light off the bed when we put her on the bed to send her down for the CT scan. We have no idea how or why she fell.

That is so sad I'm sorry you and your co-worker had to deal with that, and for her family and friends. I've heard that sound (better outcome) and it's a thud you never forget.

Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP · Sep 8, 2011

Not a patient but a coworker whose baby was born with a congenital heart defect (diagnosed prenatally) and died when she was a few months old. She never made it out of the hospital. My friend had come back to work and was on shift when her husband called her that the baby was crashing. It could not have happened to nicer people.

*a patient who had struggled with infertility for four years, finally conceived and then delivered her 17week fetal demise into my hands.

*a set of barely-viable multiples, two of whom died within minutes of each other in front of their parents. I was on mother/baby that night and NICU called us asking us to get the parents over there asap, as one was crashing. Mom & Dad got over there and they were coding one of them (one of the most awful, violent things I have ever witnessed); they handed him to Mom, who says to her husband, "No, you hold him. He's your only son." That baby died in his daddy's arms, and one of his sisters died a few minutes later, having previously been stable.

*a patient whose husband beat her regularly. They were both patients at the clinic where I worked. She had scars all over her body from the many times he'd tried to stab her. But she was terrified to leave, saying, "No matter where I go, he'll find me and kill me."

*One little boy at the same clinic whose mother was a migrant farmworker, father unknown. The sweetest, bubbliest personality, and into everything. If Curious George had been a person, it would have been this kid. He was as close to a baby as anything I had at the time. Also with a congenital cardiopulmonary defect that eventually got fixed pro bono at a university hospital, after he had lived with it for many years and stunted his growth. Amazing how he took off growing like a weed after his heart no longer had to work so hard to maintain the status quo. After I left the clinic, I found out from a friend of the family that after all that he'd gotten cancer and died after about a year. He was ten. I cried and cried over that boy. It makes me not quite so afraid to die, knowing that I'll see him - whole - again one day. But still, it's one of those things that, as Forrest Gump says, just don't make no sense.

That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Sep 8, 2011

We are a smaller hospital so you get to know your frequent flyers rather well. We had 2 people pass this other week that we knew all too well. The first was a 37 yo with mets everywhere and was dying a slow death. When I first had him, he was doing amazing, but you could tell he was getting worse. The only thing he wanted to do was get better to play with his new born daughter. As the time went on, he could barely even hold her in his arms and you could see the devastation in his eyes. He was released to go home on hospice and died the next day...

The other was a 31 yo drug addict, narc seeking, renal failure, liver failure pt that no one liked. He was horrible to all the staff, rude to every doctor and a general annoyance to anyone he could find. This last time he came in, he looked terrible, given a 6 month max prognosis. The other night he coded and it jaded the entire staff involved. No matter how much of an ass he was to everyone, we all knew him and he is not much older than a lot of us. He died that morning shortly after we resuscitated him.

We had both extremes, the person trying to get better with no hope, and the person with hope, that continued to destroy his life day by day. Both were young, not terribly older than me. It really shook me to my core and put a lot of things in perspective for me.

Aeterna, BSN, RN · Sep 8, 2011

Working on a floor that sees a lot of oncology/palliative patients, we see a lot of these kinds of cases, sadly enough. I've seen lots of great, kind, funny people deal with some of the most devastating diseases and harshest of treatments and I've only been there a year. Yet, I wouldn't even know where to start...

xtxrn, ASN, RN · Sep 8, 2011

Elvish and ThatGuy....those patients were lucky to have you there. :heartbeat:up:

mmm cdiff · Sep 8, 2011

We had a kid on our unit recently die from leukemia. His parents had tried for years and years to have a child, to no avail. Then they finally had him, and he died young from a horrible disease. I still think about this family every day, and the heartbreak they've been through.

Jenni811, RN · Sep 8, 2011

what a great, uplifting post considering the ones we have had floating around scaring all the students :)

One i just recently had. 19 year old that was hit by a drunk driver. He had everything going for him in life. Graduated high school with honors, made the deans list at college. Was in school for pre-med, was at the top of his class. Nicest family in the world. Loving girlfriend, they had been together since they were 13 years old.

He was hit by a drunk driver and paralyzed from the neck down and will forever be ventilator dependent. Family was having financial concerns as it was, and they were unable to take him home because they had their power shut off (he his ventilator dependent). so they had to put him in a nursing home until they could figure out financially what to do. I'll never forget him telling me "I am dead inside"

It was a privilege to be apart of that family.

xtxrn, ASN, RN · Sep 8, 2011

The patients I remembered (not always their name, but them, their family/friends, etc) were what kept me going during the days when it seemed that the fan was getting a constant stream of "dung". :) Even though it involved a lot of tragic situations (some funny), at least I knew I'd done what I could to help them out....sometimes WAY out. It made the idiots a bit easier to deal with- they were outnumbered by the ones it was a privilege to know :)

Jenni811, RN · Sep 8, 2011

I work in cardiology/pulmonary. our hospital has a oncology/hospice floor. It is divided, and there are not that many hospice rooms. So i one time got a hospice patient that would be in my unit, basically pain control, until a hospice room would open up.

Well i get this guy, 40 some years old dying of cancer. Can't remember what, but i know he had mets basically everywhere and they tried everything. (My hospital is a huge cancer center). His respirations were getting to about 8/min, he could still talk, but very quiet and weak. His one last request, from everyone, was to get him a Coca Cola. I sure as heck got on that case. I new the hospice center had ANYTHING you could think of in sitations like this for families. I requested a bottle of coke, and i got it within 5 minutes!

Everytime i see a bottle of coca cola i think of this patient