of life and death

[eeyore_grrl]

a few weeks ago i was in the er hooked up to ivs for a migraine and ridiculous amounts of vomiting. as ian and i sat in the little curtained area for hours as i begged for something to stop the horrid restlessness that came from the medication. my nurse lacked in the bedside manner, but the doctor was good and attentive.

we overheard a man come in with vague complaints that had been going on for a few days. he was talking to the doctor, they hadn’t even hooked him up to the usual stuff yet and his heart went wonky. i don’t know the proper terminology. but we overheard (ian may have been able to see it from his angle) the doctor calmly call for help (“hey guys i need you over here now.”) when the guy went bad. and we heard the subsequent dialogue for the Three times they had to shock him. the doctor was always calm and to the point when he spoke and when he dealt with the situation that occurred.

he was alive when we left. but there is something strange and disturbing to witness someone almost dying several times.

Comments

[ef2p.livejournal.com]

the doctor was always calm and to the point when he spoke and when he dealt with the situation that occurred.

It kind of amazing the way that happens and it's all about training. You practice that stuff so many times that when it happens, you just do, you don't really think. It become automatic. It's kind of like an out of body experience. The nerves hit after your done.

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

Do you know what they gave you for nausea? I'm guessing it was Reglan. That stuff makes me want to pull out my bones through my flesh and is now on the (bad reaction) drug list on my records.

[ptor.livejournal.com]

I've been on the other side...

I was working as a surgical orderly in the mid-80's.

A patient came into an emergency surgery with a ruptured aorta. Bad thing to have. The doctors were bickering with the anesthesiologists, telling them that they needed to keep the blood pressure up. The main anesthesiologist levelly replied that if the surgeons slowed the bleeding, they would be able to keep the pressure higher. It was a frantic but orderly scene. Crazy busy calm.

Then suddenly they decided to give up. I don't know who. Main surgeon? Maybe it had been too long for the patient to possibly live through the lack of oxygen? Everyone just stopped, said "Okay, that's it!" and left the room. Off to the break room for coffee.

I was left in there with a dead guy. Blood all over the place.

[densaer.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting story, to say the least. I think I'd have a hard time witnessing the scene without being able to do anything about it (even knowing that the right help was there and better prepared than I).

When I flew with LifeFlight last year, I talked to the flight nurse who treated the Olympic cyclist that was killed by the Sheriff's Deputy in Cupertino a few weeks earlier. She said that when the patient is there, she could focus on her job, but reading about this athlete in the newspaper was what humanized her. I think a certain amount of distance is required to deal with the harshness of that work, but everyone's human.

Still, I want MY doctors to be cool, calm and collected when *I* get into trouble.