Your first experience with a dead person

[ixchel]

During my internship, a page came overhead - code blue, ED, 2 minutes. My preceptor said, "you want in?" Well, yeah, of course I did. I'm realizing more and more I'm a trauma, critical care junkie. So I went down.

This frail, elderly woman was there on the table, clothes cut off her, just still. She could have been sleeping. The nurses were working on resuscitative efforts. The MD said stop. She was gone.

And as the group began quietly fixing her body for her husband to be with her, I held her still warm head, perfectly made hair, in my hands. A nurse came crashing in the door shouting in her "call to action" voice, "do you need blood???"

I couldn't help it. I had to giggle. They told her no, and she left. It was quiet and dark in the room. It had felt so full and busy when the woman first arrived, but now it was quiet, still, in peace.

I haven't seen any death in my tenure on this giant ball of rock. I've only been in the room with one deceased person before this. This woman will stay with me as my "first".

Do any of you have a first death experience that stays with you?

[seaofclouds21, BSN, RN]

My first death was during nursing school. We were doing a rotation in the ER and an ESRD patient came in that had missed her HD the day before. Another student and I were at the nurses station with one of the nurses and the patient's heart monitor showed the "tombstones". The nurse noticed it and we ran back to the room and the patient went into cardiac arrest. We started CPR and the code team arrived. We worked on her for 30 minutes before the doctor called it. It all happened so fast that there wasn't really a chance to process it until later that day. The patient was well know to the ER for coming in on her death bed after missing dialysis. She didn't have any family. I felt really bad that was how her last moments ended.

I had another death during clinicals (that same semester) on a med-surg floor. I was caring for an ESRD patient that was recently made comfort measures. I spent one day helping care for her and getting to know her family. We spent a lot of time talking about her life and final wishes. The next day, when we arrived she was declining. The family was called in and I spent her last moments at her bedside holding hands with her family. After she passed, I stepped out to give the family some privacy. My instructor came to me and told me it was okay to cry as long as I wasn't louder than the family. Her timing was perfect because no more than 2 minutes later, the family came out and requested for me to come back in the room and join them in their goodbyes. I couldn't help but cry. I was sad for them and their loss, but honored that they wanted to share that with me. I cried silent tears and listened as they sang her favorite song.

In the years since then, I have watched more deaths than I can count. Some have been codes that ended badly, some unexpected DNRs, and some planned terminal weans. While I can detach from a lot of the emotion that comes with it, there always seems to be one here and there that gets to me.

[Biffbradford]

I suppose this is an inappropriate place for a joke? (we're all nurses here, right?) As many jokes are, it's probably based on a real life experience of someone.

Major hospital, somewhere USA, two people are in charge of taking a body to the morgue, but don't know exactly where it is so they found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also guess they didn't have the body covered properly because as they were waiting for an elevator, it opened and someone walked out. Looking at the person on the cart as they walked by, they whispered: "Boy, he looks terrible!".

I don't remember my first, but I remember many after ... and wish I didn't.

[Nonyvole, BSN, RN]

My first was a pediatric trauma when I was working EMS. There was enough head trauma that medical command told us to stop trying. Honestly, I'm glad that my first big death was that - it did a lot towards showing me that life really isn't fair; that I can't save everyone; and that it isn't just my patient that I need to think about, but also their families.