the first, and i hope the last, time

i work in an emergency room.

it is inevitable that i see things that are like indelible stains in my memory.

stories, images. sometimes they flow through my head at night at lightning speed.

sometimes they are slow motion images that haunt.

could we have done anything else?

should we have done something different?

how on earth is that family going to go home tonight and wake up in the morning and just breathe?

i had to do something for the first time in my 15+ years of nursing. 10 of which has been spent in the emergency room.

i had to participate in a code of a 12 year old boy.

a code is where the person you are caring for is no longer breathing and doesn't have a heart beat.

he was 12.

the circumstances surrounding what put him in that situation were totally accidental. wrong place, wrong time.

he was 12.

we switch off doing chest compressions every 1-2 minutes because it is exhausting.

i got to be his heart beat every few minutes.

he was 12.

i keep coming back to that because i cannot wrap my head around it.

the mother had to come in after we had done everything, everything we could have done.

she had to say good-bye.

and then go home to his room.

still a mess, probably.

maybe some dirty clothes on the floor.

some open comic books spread out.

school books in a backpack.

how on earth do you sleep after saying goodbye?

how do you even say goodbye?

i hope i never have to do that again.

what a night...

last night was rough.

a 36 year old man died early this morning despite all our efforts.

36.

i turn 35 this year.

no one else seemed bothered by this turn of events.

the staff were casual.

cavalier, even.

joking.

laughing.

in his room as he was taking his last breaths and beating his last beats.

we all deal with death differently. in my course of nursing over the last 15 years, i have been at the bedside of more people than i can remember as they breathe their last.

or maybe they breathed their last 20 minutes prior and we have just been their breath and heart beat as we try to bring them back.

however you want to look at it.

i cannot remember all their faces. or their names. just that i have seen a lot of people die.

some deaths are peaceful. like Mr Q who sat up in bed after days of being comatose and reached up him arms to heaven and smiled. i still get chills remembering than one.

or nancy. she suffered a long time with myeloma, only to succumb in a hospital room surrounded by family, and me. i count myself very privileged to have been in that room holding her hand with my right and linking with all of her children to form a circle as she went to see Jesus.

some deaths are torturous. they linger on your mind and spirit because they are filled with angst. i imagine that their meeting with our Maker is of a different kind.

this morning, i should have spoken up. please forgive me, Mr S.

i should not have let them speak those things in your room.

i needed their help, not their sarcasm.

but, again. everyone deals with death differently.

once you stop caring about the life that is lost before your very eyes, though....

well, it is time for a new job. nursing is no longer your calling.

my patients last night

i left work this morning feeling a bit depressed. i got to see both ends of the spectrum. at least, i saw two vastly different life situations that fall onto that spectrum of life's tragedies. each one very different, and yet, both very sad.

one of my patients was elderly. her son has been taking care of her for about 10 years and has the power of attorney to make decisions for her. he has gained medical knowledge along the way. but he has scant knowledge in a vast ocean of possible knowledge. because of that he comes across as quite arrogant scared that his mother is not going to make it out of the hospital this time. and she probably won't. she has several problems, the least of which involve
her lungs (she cannot breathe on her own and hasn't since february),
her heart (she has random bouts of rapid heart rates that last for hours on end..up to160 beats/minute),
her gut (she has a feeding tube in her belly and a colostomy),
her skin (she has a lot of pressure ulcers that go deep to the bone and muscle that will probably never heal) ...
if that wasn't enough, she isn't really there. i mean, she opens her eyes, but she cannot move, speak or even gag. this is not good. but the son cannot let go. at all. it is very sad to watch this woman waste away.
i don't think it is how God intended us to live.
i realize that there are very different opinions on this out there. i am not trying to inflame anyone or point a finger at anyone. i guess i just know that i wouldn't want to be alive like that. not after nearly 80 years of life. i would be tired. i wouldn't want to be stuck in a body that couldn't move. and someone else was responsible for feeding me, bathing me, and wiping me. where i was stuck in a hospital bed without my family around me. i also know that, if i were in the same situation as the son, it might be different. it can be very hard to let go when you think you are doing the right thing and that maybe, just maybe, your loved one might get better. maybe.

the other patient i had was young. had made some very bad choices in his life and so was shackled to the bed. (why they do this to correctional facility patients, i will never know. they cannot go anywhere because they are so sick. why must we torture them and risk injury to their legs .) at 18 he entered the correctional department for some very dangerous criminal acts. he has been there several years already, and it finally caught up with him.
he was attacked in his cell.
he was unconscious and down for an unknown amout of time.
he had a bad bleed on the brain.
it required surgery to relieve the pressure.
he cannot talk, follow commands, or even open his eyes to command.
this seems to be a wasted life. so young, and yet it is already over. his family will hold on to the hope that his brain will recover. that the swelling in his brain will go down and he will be himself again. to go back to prison and finish out his sentence.

i left feeling very sad for these two people who are suffering. some days i don't like my job. some days the black and white blur so grey i can't see beyond it. my only comfort is the knowledge that God is Sovereign and sees each of these people. do they know Jesus? i don't know. but i could whisper it to them as i did their bedbaths. i could show Jesus to their families as i care for them as i would my own family. i can know that God is God, and that only He knows who they really are. that maybe, just maybe, they are children of the King and will see heaven. i can pray that God continues to place empathetic Christians in their path to help them along the way.