A little Bit about Death

A patient of mine died tonight. 

I've had other patients die before. I have... but the thing is, I was ready for it. They were ready for it. They came here where I work, to die. Tonight, someone that wasn't waiting for it, was greeted by death. It's taken me a few hours for the realization that he's gone, to sink in. My stomach actually hurts. Everything just happened in a crazy blurred tornado.

Finding him unconscious, calling a nurse, him performing CPR. *my adrenaline spiking* The MA calling 911, me standing in a stupor of idiocy watching this man die and wanting to do more. Grab the vitals cart, grab his chart, call his wife, his daughter, no answer. Frantically search for his DNR record, can't find it, he's a full code. EMT arrive, lots of them, cops, other curious patients. Nothing like death to draw in a crowd.

Questions, running, searching, watching, running, watching, just watching.... so this is what death is like. One minute you're there asking for water because you can't get enough to drink and the next....you're gone. Just. Gone.

Was he watching us there? Trying to revive his lifeless body? I don't know if I'd watch if it were me. I'd be looking for the people I love or visiting the living people I'll miss and saying goodbye however my spirit could.

After the ambulance rushed his body away and the audience left, I went back into his room to clean. I washed, I pushed back tears, and I thought. I thought about a TV show I like. Scrubs. I thought about the first time that the main character encountered death, he said something like, "The one thing I felt, was guilt, about how hard this was for me."

His death was hard for me. It was hard for me to realize that that was it. It was done. It was hard for me to see him like that. They were so rough with his body when they did CPR and eventually intubated him. It is even hard now to realize that somewhere a family has been changed forever.

I can only pray with all my heart that the last few hours of his life under my care were good ones. I hope that somewhere his family is being comforted. I know I am comforted by the knowledge that he lived a long life. I hope it was mostly good for him. I am comforted to know that what he has beyond this life is much better. He went home.

And now I just hope I can recover quickly from losing him, because my heart hurts.