it is a hard recovery

when a leukemia patient complains of a a headache you don't give them 2 tyelnol and walk away and hope it goes away from them. you double check their platelets and then send them to a CT scan ASAP. it is the scare that some sort of bleed could be going on inside their head. it will take only a nanosecond to start and a code team with a neurosurgeon on nad to stop.

i have only seen a couple of these in my 12 years of working as a nurse. i had never seen any one die from it. just get a bit confused. we would transfuse them left and right until their platelets had gone to a safe level and everyone would take a deep breath of relief.

one day of working and this way of curing the bleed changed my belief. it happened so quickly. confusion at 12pm, count check at 1210, she complains of a severe headache at 1220, head scan at 1230 that showed 2 new bleeds. 1240 neurosurgeon at the bedside doing an exam. 1250 the woman's pupils became fixed. 1251 we intubated her, 1257 a new scan was obtained and a total of 4 bleeds became known. 130 the family is at the bedside saying goodbye, they did not want to keep her on the vent, since it was near impossible for her brain to recover. 200 we extubate. 245 she died. at 730am that morning she said good morning to me as she ate her blueberry muffin and sipped her coffee.

i know the text books tell me how these things happen. i know there is medical law and reason that explains the whys. but nothing can stop it replaying in my mind. there laws, the reasons don't make me stop dreaming about it. dont make me stop wondering if i should of done something sooner, did i not notice anything odd in my morning assessment? no she was talking, pupils were equal and reacted to light.
it was a death that is hard to forget. i couldn't stop the tears the day after. did i know this woman more than a day? no. but does that matter? i hope not. it was watching a mother die. it was watching a family greive. it was watching a life slip away no matter what we did to try and stop that. it was overwhelming and even now thinking of it, i can't help but feel a heaviness in my chest.

i was watching the end of the movie: Legends of the Falls today. at the end of the movie, it speaks of how Tristan the main character died a "good death". hmm. what is that? it wasn't like he was in bed squeezing the hands of his loved ones and saying goodbye. more i would think that he lived his life as best as he could and even if his last words were not to his family, they had no doubts of how he felt about them. this made me think of her. she may not of said goodbye probably in the way she wanted. but by the circle of family around her that cried and hugged and spoke to her unconscious body - it was pretty obvious they had received love from this woman. this is what gives me comfort.