I'm feeling morbid. What is the worst death you've seen? I work in a MICU, so we don't get babies or gunshots (or babies with gunshots; they do in our ER, true story.) but we see some pretty dramatic stuff. A patient dying doesn't bother me too much because most of my patients are so sick that it is a relief to send them off to the happy hunting grounds. It is the family they leave behind that holds onto me and won't let go.
We had a teenager sent to us from the hem-onc floor because he was in ARDS. He'd been sick since he was 12, and now he was really sick. He was on the oscillating ventilator all night and his sats just kept dropping; 70, 60, 50. He coded just before change of shift and when he bradied down and half the unit ran in to crack the code cart that had been sitting there all night, his mother started yelling, no no no, and it still makes me cry just to think about. I don't think anyone who was there that night was unaffected; we usually don't get kids, and it hit too close to home for most of us.
I have a lot of respect for those of you that work in peds because I could not deal with something like that more than once in a lifetime. I had one other patient when I was working on a med-surge floor, who had been using crack and ran a stopsign with her baby and her seven-year old. The baby died (we couldn't get ahold of the trauma team all day because they were working on him) and she was my patient with two chest tubes, and the pediatric surgeon came down to ask me if I thought she was stable enough to go say good bye to her baby because they were going to take him off life support. It wasn't a death that I witnessed directly, but I went home crying for three days.
I like to think I've can pretty much hold it together when it comes to codes, etc. However I'm currently in NICU caring for a little 28 weeker with every heart defect in the book. It is breaking my heart watching him slowly die and I have nothing but admiration for his wonderful parents who refuse to give up hope. This little boy has come so far that you think maybe, just maybe this once, he might be that one in a million who will make it. But then you sit down and look at his results, you re-read your books at night searching for that glimmer of hope and it's not there.
His mom says that no-one will acknowledge that he has lived longer than they had thought (30 days) and that maybe they are wrong and maybe the books are wrong and maybe his heart isn't completely inoperable. I wish I could give her the answers she wants to hear more than anything. I go home every night with tears running down my face knowing each day could be his last and trying to fit in as many photos of parent and baby as I can and create as many moments and memories as I can fit in.
It is the worst death I have seen and I am still seeing it.
It is at times like this I hate being a nurse. I wish my biggest problem was that i didn't balance a budget right or that I was late for a deadline. However, I know that I am doing my best for these parents and that I am helping mum and dad create a life with their little boy, however short, rather than just watching a death. I hope they know how much I care about them and I really hope their little boy is one in a million.
I have seen two end-stage COPD deaths and I absolutely agree they are by far the worst.
The first was one of my very first few days of hospital placement as a student where I barely knew how to use the VS machine let alone deal with a compromised pt. We were on a medical floor and I was walking down the hall to grab some supplies when I heard "Help! Help!" So, I followed the voice and went into the pt's room (not my pt, had no idea what the dx was) and here was this man who was obviously in distress and telling me he couldn't breathe. I couldn't bring myself to leave him so I rang the call bell and tried to help him sit up. It was a fellow student who answered the bell and I knew something was wrong, but I had no freaking clue what to do so I whispered "get a nurse NOW." Next thing I know the code team is leaving and myself and the student that answered the call bell were preparing the body before the family got there. He was young, in his 50s with kids not much older than me. I felt awful.
More recently, in LTC I had a LOL who had been on the brink of death multiple times before and always bounced back. I'm a new nurse and don't always know when death is imminent, but this time I had a feeling. No one would believe me and kept treating her as though she'd be back to normal soon. We had a PO/SQ morph order and everyone was giving her PO because it was easier. I went in and asked this lady (who was not a complainer and specifically told me that she denies pain when asked because she doesn't want to bother the nurses) if the pills were taking the pain away and she told me no. I practically begged the other nurses to treat her pain more aggressively, but no one would listen to the "newbie." She looked me in the eyes and said "I don't want to suffer anymore" which just broke my heart. I advocated my butt off for that pt, but It wasn't until a couple shifts before she finally died that the other nurses started using the SQ and even then were using it minimally. That poor woman died in pain, suffering, and gasping for air.
On a happier note, I had a death not long ago that was a really positive experience. It was a woman that had been non-communicative and so contractured she could barely move for a long time. Her condition suddenly declined and she was deemed palliative. Her family was there literally 24/7 for over 3 weeks. Family had been refusing analgesia +++ and I had offered it several times throughout my shift. Finally, the pt was moaning a bit so family agreed to some morph. I went to get it and when I got back the periods of apnea had dramatically increased in length and I told the family that it might be a good time to say their goodbyes. They came over and held the pt's hands and sang the pt's favourite hymn while the pt took her last few breaths. It was truly an honor to be a part of that experience. It was incredible how happy the family was that their loved one was no longer suffering. Very moving...
The worst for me was the two brothers with Huntingtons. I cared for them for about three years before they finally deteriorated enough to require leaving the group home for a skilled nursing facility. Watching that slow, inescapable loss of physical function and cognitive ability while they stayed aware of what was happening to them was heartbreaking. No medications or treatments that really help even slow thing down, much less stop the process; nothing really that I could do except care about and for them as I watched them lose bits of themselves every day. I never want to watch that slow crawl to oblivion again.
Specializes in Emergency, Internal Medicine, Sports Med.
Working in an ER I've seen some gruesome deaths (mainly involving motorcycles), but I wouldn't say those are the "worst".
The worst deaths, for me, is slowly watching a patient die- perhaps its over a shift, perhaps it's over a couple. Either way, you have a relationship with the family....I hate tip-toeing to see a pt's still breathing every half hour throughout the night, and when I suspect they are close to the end, having to wake up family members sleeping at the bedside to witness their loved one's last breath. Before working in ER I worked on an acute medical floor, and had an anorexic 32 yr old woman pass away. Her mother slept on a mattress at the foot of her bed on the floor for weeks, waiting for her daughter to die (complication of anorexia). Her mother would sometimes ask me if it was really happening, or "what percentage does she have of dying", ....difficult questions brought fourth with denial stages.
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
Being a nurse for 32 years and having spent most of it in the ED, I have seen lots of death. Patients coming in on one stretcher with their body parts on another. Woman shot in the chest at close range with a shotgun. She was alive on arrival but died in the OR. It took most of her right chest off. A woman with terminal cancer with a huge cavity in her chest that was stuffed with a beach towel. The nurse had to get between the patient and the doctor to keep him from trying to resuscitate her. A child beaten to death by his "parents". This child was white but his back, from neck to ankle was blue black in color from all the beatings he had taken over so long a time. His genitals were so traumatized that you could hardly tell what sex he was. Burns, any other harm that you could think of, had been done to this child. He finally died of a head injury.
But what hurts me the most are some of the people who survived their trauma. Sometimes, to me, it is a pain worse than death. To have an 8 year old girl come into the ER with genital herpes so bad that she cannot urinate because she has been used in countless Media films... to see that dead, vacant stare in her eyes. Her lack of reaction to anything painful... to essentially be dead. That very often hurts me the most.
Specializes in labor and delivery,peds, med sure, ASU a.
Well I obviously rarely see deaths working in labor and delivery, but last year there was a patient who passed from amniotic embolism. It wasnt caught sadly until she passed. Baby ended up in emergency section. One of the nurses noticed the fhr on monitor in 50's, she went in to room, mom was not responsive.needless to say that wasnt babys hr but moms from pulse ox. I remember helping that nurse and that morning she said the patient states she felt real nervous...maybe it was a sign of it? Another patient was 35 weeks passed from H1N1. We had her in our unit for two weeks. Then she went to ICU becuase she got worse and we couldnt stabilize her. The had four kids-whom her parents sued for custody and won because he didn't have his papers from Mexico. This guy was there every day with her in the hospital. I remember her parents came to visit maybe once. So sad:crying2:
I like to think I've can pretty much hold it together when it comes to codes, etc. However I'm currently in NICU caring for a little 28 weeker with every heart defect in the book. It is breaking my heart watching him slowly die and I have nothing but admiration for his wonderful parents who refuse to give up hope. This little boy has come so far that you think maybe, just maybe this once, he might be that one in a million who will make it. But then you sit down and look at his results, you re-read your books at night searching for that glimmer of hope and it's not there.
His mom says that no-one will acknowledge that he has lived longer than they had thought (30 days) and that maybe they are wrong and maybe the books are wrong and maybe his heart isn't completely inoperable. I wish I could give her the answers she wants to hear more than anything. I go home every night with tears running down my face knowing each day could be his last and trying to fit in as many photos of parent and baby as I can and create as many moments and memories as I can fit in.
It is the worst death I have seen and I am still seeing it.
It is at times like this I hate being a nurse. I wish my biggest problem was that i didn't balance a budget right or that I was late for a deadline. However, I know that I am doing my best for these parents and that I am helping mum and dad create a life with their little boy, however short, rather than just watching a death. I hope they know how much I care about them and I really hope their little boy is one in a million.
You seem like an amazing nurse. I pray to God that I am never in a situation like that, but, if I am, I would want a nurse just like you.
I just have to say that I give you all a lot of credit for your strength, esp the child deaths or the ones who are young and you don't expect it. My friend was doing her nurse preceptorship on OB and had to witness the passing of a mother and her unborn baby from Pre-E and DIC during an urgent (but at that time not an emergency because they thought she was stable) c-section surgery. I can't imagine. She had helped prep the mom beforehand and mom was excited to meet the baby. I can't imagine being the one to have to tell the father that he lost both his wife and his baby. No one goes into a c-section these days, esp a scheduled one, fearing death.
i agree the family is worse than the patient - especially if it's an instance where a husband and wife were in an accident and one lives while the other dies. i don't know what to say (and there's really nothing you can say) to make the living spouse feel better. that's one thing that pulls on my heart strings every time. it's different from the average patient where you can talk to them about what they're watching on TV or how many kids they have, etc. you walk in and you know they just found out their husband/wife died - and it's the most awkward/devastating silence ever. i hate it. i usually ask "is there anything i can do for you right now to help you be more comfortable?" and usually they are crying and will make me tear up and i'll say, "i wish there was something i could do." it's awful.
This thread is so sad. I just got a job as a Unit Sec on a Med/Surg floor and I am hoping that I will be exempt from having to see any of this at least until I finish school.
Acrylic
7 Posts
I like to think I've can pretty much hold it together when it comes to codes, etc. However I'm currently in NICU caring for a little 28 weeker with every heart defect in the book. It is breaking my heart watching him slowly die and I have nothing but admiration for his wonderful parents who refuse to give up hope. This little boy has come so far that you think maybe, just maybe this once, he might be that one in a million who will make it. But then you sit down and look at his results, you re-read your books at night searching for that glimmer of hope and it's not there.
His mom says that no-one will acknowledge that he has lived longer than they had thought (30 days) and that maybe they are wrong and maybe the books are wrong and maybe his heart isn't completely inoperable. I wish I could give her the answers she wants to hear more than anything. I go home every night with tears running down my face knowing each day could be his last and trying to fit in as many photos of parent and baby as I can and create as many moments and memories as I can fit in.
It is the worst death I have seen and I am still seeing it.
It is at times like this I hate being a nurse. I wish my biggest problem was that i didn't balance a budget right or that I was late for a deadline. However, I know that I am doing my best for these parents and that I am helping mum and dad create a life with their little boy, however short, rather than just watching a death. I hope they know how much I care about them and I really hope their little boy is one in a million.