Consider Yourself Warned

Last night at work was horrific. Not just busy, but a bad busy. Sick people busy.

Sometimes nursing isn't glamours. Sometimes? Never.

And sometimes we see and do things people shouldn't do in their lifetime. Yet we are to come home, kiss our kids and move on as if that night didn't happen for fear that it will dampen who we are. Fear it will take the love of what we do out of us if we let it get to us. In an effort to not let that happen, i'm going to vent about what i did/saw last night. Readers beware.

Consider yourself warned.

**entering the world of a nurse, ready GO**

I was charge nurse last night.

There was a patient in particular who was struggling since the beginning of our shift. He was 57. Lung cancer with mets to brain, abd, and basically everywhere.

The glorious part of nursing is we get to be in these peoples lives for 12 hours. In their business. The not so great part is we are there when it isn't good, and have to have tough conversations we wish the doctors would have done when the patient wasn't failing so miserably.

This patient was struggling to breath all night.

His nurse, and I both knew, his next step was to be intubated (breathing tube), but if that happened we knew he would never come off that tube. His cancer was so intense and fast growing nothing could stop it.  His oxygen toward the morning would not come above 83% (normally should be 100%).

He was dying.

He was a full code.

Horrible.

We called for help. Doctors and nurses came to his bedside. He decided in a panic he didn't want a tube down his throat. I was there with the doctor as we explained to this 57 year old he was dying.

Dying.

"Sir, there is no hope for you. There is nothing we can do. If we put this tube down your throat, we have to paralyze you, you won't eat, and you won't talk. We can't stop your cancer. You are dying."

I called his wife. Told her the situation, asked her to come to the hospital as soon as she could.

30 minutes later i was called to his bedside.

You could see he was failing. He was no longer conscious. He was shaking.

I've never seen someone so "actively" die before. It looked painful.

Awful
I held the wife. We sat down together next to him. I looked at her and said "he's dying. This is it." She nodded.
Then, he was gone.
I got up and closed his eyes.
Checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
This poor wife. She had basically 30 minutes to say goodbye. It was horrible.
I apologized to her for how sudden and terrible this was. I was sorry she didn't have time to say goodbye. I was sorry we couldn't better control his pain and anxiety.

I was just sorry.
Sorry she said she had no one except him. Sorry she had to call his mom and tell her she has lost her 3rd child at the age of 75. I'm just sorry it ended this way. Ended so fast.

Sometimes i feel i didn't sign up for this crazyness. I was never prepared to help people die. I didn't go to school for this. I didn't realize i would hold a wife's had as we watched her husband die.

I know i was meant to be there with her. She was thankful for my hand. She was thankful i was there with her husband. She was thankful.

But my heart still aches, even this morning, at the sights I saw and the sounds i heard.

It's an amazing profession, nursing. But the emotional side is taxing. And if situations like this we can't talk about, I think it would make us all crazy.

I love what i do. I'm good at what i do. I love helping people. I don't like feeling helpless in situations that are 100% out of our control.

That was last night.

So i hugged and kissed my kids. Never leading on that at 0630 this am i was with a dying patient. Then at 0730 i was on my way home to kiss my babies. Life is so short and sudden.