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Category: Life

11.27.2021-- Hospital Nightmares

TW: DEATH, COVID-19, HOSPITALS



No job ever compares to working in health care. You see a lot of things that most do not in the hospital. Grocery stores, fast food, all other essential jobs are difficult in their own ways. Ways I cannot even handle, but surprisingly for the most part, what I can handle is seeing the critically ill and even the dead, almost daily. 


Yesterday was a death that shook me a little harder than the others. Perhaps it is because I was along the ride for this patient's entire journey from admission to his ICU room to his last breath. Almost two weeks ago, I was working a rare shift in the ICU covering for the person who usually cleans evenings up there. In one of the rooms was a man, somewhere in his late 60s, maybe early 70s getting settled into his new bed. The glass door to the room was closed and had a bright orange sign on it saying which PPE to wear before entering his room- which is always the dead giveaway that the patient has COVID-19. Most patients who are admitted into the ICU for COVID symptoms do not survive more than a month. I was hopeful this guy would be different. His bed was pushed next to the glass dividing wall, his wife was sitting on the other side in a chair. They both had their hands on the glass, to feel as close as possible without actual physical contact. I can only imagine that type of fear and worry, and I began to think about what I would do if that were Tristan in that man's bed. I hoped and hoped that by some miracle, his case would be miraculous. That day he was put on a standard Bi-PAP to aid in raising his blood oxygen levels. These treatments are no less invasive than a C-PAP sleep apnea patients wear at night. It keeps positive air pressure in the lungs to keep them open and receiving oxygen. 


The following week, I watched his condition rapidly deteriorate. I still saw his wife and some other family members come to visit him, although they could not enter his room to speak to him before he spoke for the last time. I cleaned his room as routine, and every night I told him to keep fighting, and that his life depended on it, and I told him I believed in him. Then he was put in a medically induced coma, and completely intubated. He could no longer speak, no longer move, and all the noise I heard from his room from this point forward was the tone alerts from his ventilator. He layed there, mouth gaping with the hose down his throat. Sometimes they would flip him over on his stomach and change the angle of the bed in hopes it would help his blood oxygen levels stable. But the man was fighting a losing battle. We all had to gown up in gloves, gowns, n95s and face
shields before we could even enter his room. 


COVID-19 — Monterey Fire Company



Yesterday I walked in on what I wasn't expecting to. His whole family was there next to his room looking in. Some where getting dressed up in the PPE to enter the room, and a whole group was in the waiting room. With all of the context based on that and everyone's facial expressions, I could only correctly piece together that the patient was either already dead, or was in the process of being taken off of life support. The latter was the correct assumption. At 9pm they started removing/turning off all of the equipment that was keeping this patient alive since he was intubated. Periodically, we would hear his vitals monitor making alert rings as his pulse and blood pressure took a dive from 80s to 30s. Within 20 minutes, the patients heart stopped beating completely. He was gone. His whole family was surrounding him in his final moments. They received the news and all fell silent. Some began to cry, then they hugged. What stuck the most was his wife...I saw her watch the love of her life die before her eyes. 

It was a horrible feeling being there to see the whole event transpire. I could only keep working with periods of offering my condolences to the patient's family. Slowly they all took their turns saying their goodbyes and eventually congregated in the waiting room, and left. I cleaned up the waiting room after the family's departure and returned to the CCU to see the corpse of the man I saw awake and alive not even two weeks prior. In the Emergency Room (where I usually work), when a patient dies, the door is closed and the curtains are drawn so other patients do not see the body. The ICU doesnt do this because there are usually no visitors, especially at this hour of the night.  He didnt have his intubation equipment in him anymore. But in just a half hour, his skin in his face had already discolored to this gross darker almost yellow/green hue. His mouth was gaping, but no movement or air was coming out. As I was restocking the linens and my closet, I watched as the doctor and nurse began to prep the body for the mortician when he arrives to pick up the deceased patient. He was uncommonly very bloody, and it took a lot of work for them to try to clean him up the best they could before putting him into a body bag. The garbage was filled to the brim with bloody gauze and rags. I was then grateful that I only had less than 30 mins of my shift left, cause the mortician wouldn't arrive til far after I have clocked out. So I didn't need to clean that room last night. 


When I got home from work, I didn't even want to take the melatonin. I was afraid to sleep because I knew I would have nightmares if I went to sleep without processing it all first.  I was awake until 5am. It was until then I felt safe enough to attempt to sleep. Thankfully I didn't have any Med-Surg/ICU dreams this time. This was rare for a night after working in the unit. I hope that this exposure to death will make it easier for the next time it happens. 

Please wear your masks and get vaccinated...



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