A Bad Beginning...A Better End

I had the worst beginning of a week ever. I went to work Sunday night. Things were busy but they were going ok. I had this patient who I had been taking care of for quite some time. She had come in for an ankle fracture and when they went to do her surgery she had coded while on the operating table. They figured she had had a stroke. She ended up being in the ICU for about a week to 2 weeks and then she was transferred back down to our floor. I had gotten to know her sister and her family that frequently came up to stay with her. Because of her stroke she wasn't doing very well...she was unresponsive and didn't move around on her own. Well Sunday night when I went in there to take care of her again she had been doing a lot better. She had been responding to questions, moving around on her own, following commands. I went in to take her morning vitals and everything was fine. I left her room and went into another. 9 minutes later her sister came out and said..."I don't think she's breathing". So we ran in there and she was totally unresponsive. We started chest compressions, got the crash cart, and called a code blue. I was in there helping for awhile but ended up going back out with her family. Her sister was sitting at the nurses station crying and I was doing my best to comfort her. 30 minutes later- the doctor came out and told us she was dead. I was floored. I had JUST been in there. What didn't I see? What could I have done? We are taught that when a patient dies you have to check out and be there for the family. It's their time to mourn, not yours. You have to check your emotions at the door which can be a very difficult thing to do. I still had work to do though and so I finished and came home. I started bawling almost immediately. I emailed my Grandma (who is a retired nurse) to talk to her about her experiances...all the time while wiping tears and snot from my face. I could not stop thinking about her and her family. Unfortunately I had to go back to work Monday night. I was dreading it. I was sick to my stomach all day. How could I go and work in that place where that had happened. It was one of those things where you leave and you see all these people just going about thier usual business and you think "how can you be normal when this horrible thing happened?" and then you realize that this happens every minute of every day. Someone loses someone they love. We don't ever think about that though. It was kind of a daunting thing. It made me think about his quote from the movie "Shall We Dance".

“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? You need someone to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. Someone to say 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.”

It has really made an affect on my life. I will never forget it. I will never forget that womans name or her family's faces.
Monday night at work one of the clinical managers let me take blood (even though I'm technically not supposed to yet). I think she felt bad about my horrible night. Well it didn't necessarily make up for it but it was still totally awesome.
On one hand I hope that I will get used to this. On the other- when you stop feeling emotion when things like this happen just because you are "used" to it...doesn't that make you less of a human?
It will be an interesting journey to find out the answer to that question.