Thursday, I spoke with an elderly man who was pretty sick and had an extensive medical history. I talked to him, helped reposition him, tried to get an IV in him. A few hours later he was dead. Ok, I mean, you all know I work in an ER and have been an ER nurse for many, many years. It's weird, though, that the actual witnessing of an awake person who then "passes on" before you eyes is pretty rare. Like, people either come in dead (or mostly dead) and are pronounced in the ER or the go upstairs and die in the ICU. Healthcare professionals have gotten very, very good at keeping people alive on ventilators, keeping their heart beating, their lungs pumping. Sometimes they live, sometimes they die, but they don't do it in the ER.
I'm thinking of a woman who came into a small community ER I worked in as an agency nurse years ago. She had very bad heart failure, like 10% of her heart worked or something and she was failing but she was wide awake and coherent. The ER doctors talked to her and she was adamant that she did not want to be intubated or have CPR done when her heart stopped. Her daughter and son in law at her side agreed. But, when she started "circling the drain" as we say, and her blood pressure was 40 nothin', the residents started to look scared and even though she did not want extraordinary measures, they were ordering everything they could possible think of short of that to try and keep her alive. And I don't blame them, we are in it to keep people alive. I saw that she was going into Vtach, then V fib and the residents didn't know what to do. The family looked at me. I said, "Do you want us to press on her chest? And the daughter was like, "NO!" So I told her to say what ever she needed to say to her mom, because she was going. The woman was actually awake and coherent and seemingly unafraid up until her last minutes. When she was gone, I told her. That does not happen a lot.
So forgive us ER people if we seem upset that patients are coming in and dying within hours, at times coming in and not looking too sick, like not "dying sick". We have been around a lot of death but not a lot of dying.
This past weekend my mother's cousin died of Covid and his wife is sick too. They're both elderly. Nice people, very friendly. I hope his wife comes through it. A lady I knew from church died, I assume from Covid but I don't know I'm just assuming anyone who dies suddenly right now is from Covid. Clara was the sweetest, kindest lady. I loved listening to her sing, she had a small but mighty voice. She was pretty humble but occasionally could be coaxed to sing Amazing Grace and it gave me goose pimples every time. Good bye Miss Clara and God speed.
It's always more shocking when a young person dies. I mean, I love Miss Clara but she was old, old like God's older sister. It is not shocking that she died, it's just so sad. I think the media spends a lot of time focusing on young people who have died. That's good for visibility, I guess, if it teaches young people to not take this for granted or think that they are immune to Covid. But most people are not going to die and I plan on being one of the ones who don't die. My husband has taken to reading studies and statistics. He said that recently in Italy someone took 60 random people who hadn't been sick at all and 40 of them had antibodies to Covid. So, that's good. He also is packing me vitamins to take every day and zinc lozenges to suck on. In the middle of all this, I started menopause, so it's been a fun week playing "fever or hot flash?"
Back to work tomorrow. I still don't feel particularly heroic or brave, I feel tired. I will go in, do the schedules, make sure have supplies, welcome the new agency nurses we found from God knows where and try and back up the staff.
No comments:
Post a Comment