on the topic of dying...

...or more accurately, watching people die.

at 1340 i was washing my hands at the sink outside his room. he was being confused as always, carrying on a conversation with his nurse who was just outside the door.

at 1400, i got the call for help to his room. when i got there he was grey with agonal breathing.

he was a DNR, but nobody expected him to go so fast, so we all swung into action.

call for help call a rapid response call the team.

by the time everyone got there he was already dead.

is this the way that life goes? it's good for him, really. good to go so fast without much suffering. but for the rest of us, it's a reminder of what we know deep down but try to forget. you can be vigilant to the point of stalking and still miss the dying. in the end, nothing you do can stop it. sometimes there are no warning signs, and you just don't see it coming. you can't control when it happens, and each day that goes by that you don't find one of your patients dead in their bed is one day closer to a day where you could.

yes, i realize this is completely morbid and disturbing to normal people. but this is also the reality of being a nurse.

at 1400, the nurse of the patient in question walked into his room. she had been off of orientation for 5 days. she was completely unprepared for what was about to happen.

i've been a nurse for years, and i was also completely unprepared for what was about to happen.

these are the things that they don't teach you in school. these are the things that they fail to mention all together. maybe it's because they don't want to scare us off, or maybe it's because it's really not something you can learn to deal with out of a book. you learn by seeing, you learn by doing, you learn by having it happen on your watch to your people and having to face the reality of it whether you want to or not.

from this, i learned. and i won't soon forget.