StarlightRN says ...

RNdude says ...

I don't remember my first death.  It's unfortunate, but after so many there are only a handful that stand out.

 

 

RNdude please share with us the handful of experiences you've had that stands out.

 

Starlight,

I'll try to ramble off a few as they come into my mind.  These are over the past 14 years in the ED

- elderly gentleman about a week before Christmas, came in as an arrest, died.  Searching his pockets after & found spare outdoor christmas lights.  Just made me think of someone's Grandpa out in his yard changing some bulbs.

- 12 yr old kid playing Friday night football, collapsed, flown in in full arrest, died.

- 2 yr old boy flown in after Grandma backed over him with her car & crushed his head.  Was the same age as my oldest was at the time.

- 40-something female with ICH & no cerebral perfusion, sudden.  Spent a good amount of time (relative to the ED) with her husband & then lost it when their 8 yr old daughter came back to see her after they turned off the vent.

- 27 yr old female with GSW to the left side of her chest.  Cracked her chest, found the hole in her ventricle.

- 40-something male with self-inflicted GSW to the temple, exiting on the other side.  Story was he was on the phone with his soon-to-be ex and said "oh, yeah...how about this" & popped himself.  You could grab his sideburn & lift his shattered scalf off of the trashed grey matter.

- 16 yr old male, street racing, non-restrained, rolled his car, ejected head-first into a curb.

- 60-ish male, one of our orthopedists came in as full arrest.

- 31 yr old clearing tree limbs in a bucket, backed into transformer, electrocuted, full arrest, died.

- 40-ish male with AMI, received thrombolytics, coded on us 30 minutes later, died.

- Car rolls up outside of the Triage area, "Grandma fell asleep around Coweta (30 minutes away)".  Grandma's dead.

- ATF agent from crashed helicopter flown in, died.  I remember his legs were like jell-o.

- 2 yr old boy, drowning. Was wearing a shirt he had made at School/daycare.

- Teenager racing 4-wheeler in a competition ran head-first into cement wall. Came in poorly responsive, became unresponsive, arrested.  We got him back, gave tons of blood, he arrested again, we cracked both sides of his chest looking for the source of bleeding.  died after the second resuscitation was unsuccessful.

- 20-ish Mexican kid, Came in writhing with a stab wound to the chest.  Doing the "impending doom" dance on the trauma table.  Coded within minutes, cracked his chest, didn't help.

I could go on, but you get the picture.  Unfortunately, these are a mere drop in the bucket.  The scenarios repeat themselves frequently and that's when the individual patients tend to blur in my memory.  The children will always bother me the most.  I can't explain why some of the pts stick in my memory & others do not.

 

RNdude, Those are amazing and heartbreaking. I just don't see how you deal with it week after week. That is exactly why I could not be an ED nurse. I couldn't handle all the trauma or death. We deal with death on the floor, but in a much different way than you guys in the ED. I commend you for what you do.

Thanks for sharing.

Starlight & Char,

I appreciate your words.  I think part of it is just being immersed in the ED world for so long.  You do get blunted to a lot of things, including deaths.  It's something that happens everyday you work.  When it's something that profoundly affects me and/or my partners, we hug & cry for a bit & then we have to move on.  We're each others' best support because we relate.  Part of it is just the fact that the department is relentless and you still have those you need to try to keep alive & those that just don't care or understand.  It does get a bit tiresome being a part of the worst day in people's lives.  What helps is going home and hugging your spouse and kids, knowing that they're ok.

I'll take your blessings, Char.  I'll pass them on to the other 150 folks I work with too (80 are nurses).

I have dealt with death a few times in my medical assisting carreer and I cried at every one.  Most of them were terminal and it was expected, but that doesn't soften the blow any.  The one that will always be with me is when my mom died(of course).  My sister and I sat with her in the hospital for 3 days not sure if we should be happy for her that she is at the end of her journey or sad for ourselves because she was leaving us.  When she did pass my sister and I (both being in the medical profession and having this experience) wanted to give her her last bath.  The nurse brought in the supplies and left us alone-we just held each other and bawled like little babies.  The nurse came back in to check on us and escorted us to a private room and finished the job. 

My dad died of a stroke 3 months ago.  I still haven't fully delt with it.  It seems like he will call me up one of these days.  He was in the hospital and rehab center for nearlly 3 months.  He had dementia at the end, and I was angry at the hospital for allowing him to go home.  He was only home for 2 days when he died.  I am still hurt and angry, but trying to accept it I guess.  I will never have another dad, and I miss mine so very much.

Thank you, everyone, for sharing all your stories. I think part of why nursing is so difficult is because we spend so much time with our patients and must see them through some of the most difficult times of their lives and when we lose them, it makes it so much harder.

I'm still a nursing student so I haven't had much clinical experience and so haven't had a patient die yet. Still, there was one patient I was assigned to who was terminal and I remember being told, "If he starts to go, don't leave him." This immediately scared me. I had no idea what was expected of me if he began to die with me in the room. However, I got through the day and he didn't die. I had the opportunity to talk to him a bit, as much as he could stand (because he was quite weak and had some difficulty breathing, even with the oxygen mask on), and he said living like that was difficult but he kept going. He was a fairly particular man and wanted everything just so, so it was a little frustrating at times, but while I was helping feed him lunch, he told me, "You're a very good girl. Thank you." And that made it much better and I felt glad I was able to help him.

About a month ago, I lost my uncle to stage 4 colon cancer. Even though he was originally given a year to live, he died about three months after being diagnosed. My biggest regret is not getting to know him better, even though he had so many stories from his life experiences to share - when I was younger, I was VERY shy (still am but not to the same extent) and my uncle was always a tall and intimidating-looking man who never smiled (he had a very deadpan, sarcastic sense of humour that took some getting used to). I remember visiting him a few weeks before he died and the first thing he said to me when I walked in through the door was, "So...have you come here to give me a bed bath?" to which I replied, "No, sorry, I don't do family members." And he laughed a little and told everyone, "You hear that? Marianne doesn't give family members bed baths."

For clinical next year, one of the placements available to us third years is on an oncology ward. I'm currently debating with myself whether I'd like to try for it. On the one hand, I'd love to learn about cancer and I'd like to work with cancer patients, to see what they go through, to see what my uncle went through. One of my aunts also recently got diagnosed with breast cancer and is currently undergoing chemotherapy; so, I think that having a good understanding of cancer and its treatments will help me cope with her having cancer and my uncle's death. But on the other hand, my uncle's recent passing is still fresh and I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to handle it emotionally yet, to see people die like my uncle did.

I'm also working at a nursing home this summer as a personal support worker. In the past month, we've lost two of our residents. I didn't work with them much so it wasn't too difficult to deal with their deaths, but whenever I pass by their empty beds, the place feels just a little more hollow. But one resident I see a little more often is slowly wasting away. When I first started working there in May, she was already a bit weak but she could at least stand with assistance and would talk and eat and everything. But slowly, she refused to eat and/or drink and became more reluctant to get out of bed. Now, whenever I see her, it's like she's lost half of her weight. She's now bedbound because she's far too weak to get up. I gave her a bed bath a couple weeks ago and it felt like I was washing a skeleton. When I saw her a few nights ago, her eyes looked dead and she could barely speak. I have a feeling she will pass away soon and it breaks my heart to see her get weaker and weaker that slowly. She was always a very nice and pleasant lady, never asking for much and always just wanting some peace and quiet. If she passes away before my contract finishes, I think it will be very hard for me but, as everyone says, life will go on.

My dad died 4 months ago.  It is super hard losing a parent.  I know how everyone feels out there......remembering them is the very best thing we can do to keep them alive in us.

I have also lost both of my parents. It is so hard to get over this. My mother passed away January 1995 when I was 20 years old and my father passed away November 2002 when I was 27 years old.. So as you can see I was so young to loose my parents and the holidays are really bad because one passed away before the holidays and the other passed away after.

I'm a stna and just dealt with this not to long ago. I'm was looking on here to here other peoples stories about how they deal with it. My first death was really traumatizing for me. I was an aid for about 2 months when the patient passed away. I worked midnights at the time and I was pulling a 16 hr shift, I was in my 14 hr of the shift when we found him. He was a Full Code, and their was no way we were going to bring him back. The people I was working with that night they had never experienced a death before either. We could not find the back board and then we could not find a bamboo bag, we finally did and started CPR. We had to work on him for Half and hour till the ambulance showed up. I still see his face sometimes when i close my eyes. It's been 2 years since then and I still think of him laughing and joking with us, that's how i deal with his death I think of when he was alive and smiling.

I just started a new job at another sister facility and in my first month their i had a resident pass away during dinner. I couldn't go in their I just keep seeing my first resident that passed away.

2 nights ago I got froze over and was in my 11hr of working and I had a resident that came in it was her first night there. I was on another hall but i was the one that found her. She was not able to to get up out of bed due to a broken back. The nurses already sent her out once to the hospital due to her blood pressure. She had a bed side alarm and it did not go off and she feel out of bed after she died, they think she must have got up to the side of the bed and passed away and fell off the bed. The alarm did not sound when she was no longer in her bed. She was a DNRCC. It was her time to go but I still feel so bad that their was no one with her when she passed her family had left her about 1 1/2 before she passed, so I'm glad that she got to see them before she passed.

I were my heart on my sleeve, my first one I couldn't stop crying my second one i couldn't go in her room and my third one I didn't cry but i was upset but i did what i had to do. I think it was because i just met her and didn't get attached to her. I think that was the only way i dealt with it the way I did. I don't think i will ever get use to it and sometimes when I think about having to deal with death it makes me want to get out of the health care field altogether. Once you have to deal with  someone passing away it does something to you. I don't know what it is but it has me always wanting to cry. I see their faces and then I see how we found them, and I just don't know how to deal with it.