Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Every breath you take...

I'll be watching you.

To see whether you're actually dead, that is.

I had the honor and privilege of holding a patient's hand while he passed. His family was with him and were bawling. Finally his wife asks, "Is he...dead?"

Um...

Eyes open. Pupils fixed. No visible breaths. Palpating his wrist...is that a pulse?! Shit! Is he or isn't he?!

Where's my stethoscope?! Where it always is, around my neck. Duh. Listening...listening...listening...

You don't know how long a minute really is. You really just don't know...

I hear nothing. Yes, he really is most sincerely dead. I page the doctor and go back to my computer, mentally going over the next steps in this whole process.

About an hour or so later, the charge nurse and I are performing post-mortem care.
P. is trying to grow a pair, because she's always been reluctant to do this very important task on our unit.

As we are carefully washing our deceased patient (and I have it on good authority that I'm NOT WEIRD for talking to the ones who have passed, so there!) I notice a flicker of movement...

P. jumps back with a squawk and I admit, a tiny noise might have escaped my throat.

*ahem*

I belatedly realize that the fancy-schmancy pressure-redistributing mattress doesn't give a flying fuck whether the body that's lying on it is alive or dead, it keeps on with its task of preventing pressure ulcers...by systematically deflating and inflating sections of itself, causing a rippling movement not unlike that of a water bed...incidentally and quite freakishly causing movement to our patient.

P., once she's come down off the ceiling and caught her breath, states, "That's the freakiest thing I've ever seen in my LIFE!"

Oh, Honey...you may have more experience as a nurse than I, but you ain't seen nuthin' yet!


3 comments:

Old NFO said...

Thanks for doing the 'little' things...

MDC708 said...

You just triggered a memory with that one.

I was working as an EMS dispatcher for a hospital based system. The house supervisor usually came in to our space to eat her dinner since we were behind a locked door but still had all the connectivity she needed if her pager went off (yes, it was before cell phones). One night she was quietly eating and the pager went off, she called the number and simply said "holy shit" and ran out of the room, leaving a half-eaten meal behind. A few hours later she came back and told us what happened. An elderly gentleman had died in the ED earlier after a very long resuscitation. He had been moved to the morgue but there weren't any individual lockers available so he was "laying in the corner' of the reefer. A brand new technician from the local tissue bank was working in the room when "the body in the corner" burped and sat up. The tech panicked and called the house supervisor and told her that there was a live patient who had been placed in the morgue. The house supervisor grabbed a code cart and ran down the hall, to discover that air bubbles and rigor mortis can do some interesting things to a body that has not been tied down.

I haven't thought of that one in years..

Christina RN LMT said...

NFO, it's always my pleasure.

MDC708, thank you for sharing! That's simultaneously hilarious and disturbing.