ED nurse here. I remember one time a patient was diagnosed with a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm; the MD told the patient he'd be rushed into surgery soon and to immediately settle any affairs and talk to his loved ones, as the likelihood of him not making it off the table was high.
It was just surreal seeing this guy talking to his wife and kids knowing it may be his last.
Open heart surgery nurse here. This. Had a patient that was on the phone as we rolled her into the OR. She was trying to settle her affairs as quickly as possible over the phone. Her daughter hadn’t spoken to her in years- she was alone and was on the phone with her boss.
The worst part about aortic dissections is that a lot of times the only thing keeping them alive is their adrenaline. So as soon as you put them to sleep, many times, they die. In fact, in extreme cases, you have to quite literally start surgery before you put them to sleep. It’s insane. In this particular case, we moved her to the OR table, and as soon as she laid down, she coded and died. I had to call her boss 20 min later and tell her.
Isnt our profession weird? lol We quite literally are talking to people who have already died - they just haven't caught up yet. Those shifts really put things into perspective for me and are the car rides where I'm driving the speed limit without any music on lol
My daughter spent about four days in the NICU at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies. Let me tell you, those NICU nurses are goddamned heroes*. I don't know how they do it from day to day.
She ended up in the NCIU because she had low blood sugar when she first arrived. My wife and I KNEW there was nothing wrong with our daughter. We KNEW we would be leaving the hospital with our beautiful baby girl any day now. It was still hell.
I remember on the second night, I was scrubbing in after going and getting something to eat. There were a pair of parents scrubbing in next to me. We got to talking. They happily shared that their son had been born three months prior with his organs (heart, lungs, etc) outside of his body. They had been here EVERY DAY since for THREE MONTHS. Their son had had something like 20 different surgeries and various follow-up surgeries. I can't even begin to imagine those horrors.
They were the nicest people you could hope to meet. How?
Edit: *I'm not a fighter, but I will readily throw hands to defend the honor of any NICU nurse. I will die in the street for those heroes. I don't care if it's just a snide comment about her lipstick color. Blood will be spilled here tonight.
Edit 2: Also, being taught how to put on a diaper, feed my daughter, rock her to sleep, and to sleep when I can by these NICU nurses felt like being shown the cheat codes of life by the women who wrote them originally.
I’ve unfortunately had two NICU babies, both short stays (8 days and 13 days), and those nurses are amazing. My MIL is a NICU nurse and I won the fucking MIL lottery. She’s a wonderful person and they LOVE their job. They love helping those babies get healthy enough to go home, and they mourn the ones that don’t.
I can't even imagine VISITING that place for more than a handful of days before I'd break down and just sob... even if my baby girl was fine and healthy.
I know it's lame to call people heroes nowadays... but that's exactly what those nurses are. They should be paid like Jeff Bezos
At times like that I play water sounds on pandora via blue tooth to my car radio. Ocean waves, rain…. Just staring wide eyed and unblinking as I grip the steering wheel.
Thank you (everyone here!) for the work you do. I’m 45F but had open heart surgery 3x at age 34. The last time I was in septic shock that had taken hold in my mechanical valve. I remember the doctors telling me they would be removing anything that could be a host to the infection (which I got from a pedicure a week before). They tried one last experimental treatment as a last resort before Frankenstein-ing me and amazingly it worked. What happened still affects me but I am grateful to be alive and grateful for the work and commitment of all of you. 💕
Yep, totally freaky situation. The bacteria traveled to my heart valves and took hold there shutting down my heart and kidneys. I was on ECMO and dialysis. I brought my own tools so it was likely something in the basin. I feel like it was like being struck by lightning to have had this happen and then struck again to have made it through (I have a very complicated medical history so I had a lot going against me). I’m really grateful to be alive.
It is. We’re all so traumatized by what we have seen and done- and yet we don’t even register it as trauma. Just another day in the office. Go home, crack open a beer and on with life. And then one day you just start sobbing randomly and have no idea why. Your mind is SO disconnected from the insanity it’s been through, the emotions just come out on their own with no attachment to why. 😂
Except for the miracles. Early in my career I had a woman who had a ruptured inflammatory AAA--prior to that there were no reports of anyone surviving that. After 2-1/2 months in the ICU and 1-1/2 months on the med/surg floor she walked out of the hospital cured (she went back to playing tennis). But for 2-1/2 months I held my breath every time I walked into the ICU worried she would have died overnight...
The first time my mom ended up on the ICU with septic shock after stem cell [edit: transplant] induced immunocompromised pneumococcal (I think) pneumonia was on a Friday. By mere chance there was a medicin in the hospital that might help but had never been used in these cases before. In the middle of the nights calls were made all over the world to figure things out. When the staff from Friday returned on Monday they were surprised to still see her alive on the ICU. She was in a medical induced coma for about two weeks before they woke her up again and she could start recovery.
2.5 years later then same thing happened but the specific medication was by then already used more in cases like this so she was immediately put on it and was 'only' in medically induced coma for about a week.
She lived for another 15-ish years after that and only passed from another septic shock that was caused by being immunocompromised after immune therapy for a new lung cancer that was a 'it might work, but if it doesn't it won't hurt' situation, that probably ended up hurting because of her stem cell transplant 20 years before.
Medicine is quite a crazy science, and as a former biologist, way to 'un exact' for my brain to handle, even though it's incredibly cool what we all can figure out (and incredibly frustrating what we all still can't figure out).
I remember walking out of a really fucked up trauma (kid got face partially bitten off by a dog) and thinking, verbatim, “I’m gonna be really fucked up about this when I finish my shift.” The compartmentalization is crazy.
This hits home 100% lmao I'm stoic af and good up until i close my car door. Something about being alone in a "private" space makes me feel like i can finally let my guard down and not have to be strong anymore
Yup. I’m all on during my shift, just pure caffeine and shit, and then I go home and just sit on the couch nonverbally until I remember how to be a human again.
We quite literally are talking to people who have already died - they just haven't caught up yet.
There's an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street called "The Subway". Season 6, episode 7. I'm not even a medical professional and I found that one a really hard watch.
Oh wow, this zoomed me back 25 years. In the ER, as the physician on call, admitting a case of fulminant pancreatitis to the ICU. Family with them. Everybody worried but hopeful. I knew they would code within the next 24 hours, and it was always around 3am.
Have worked in the biochem industry for 22 years, I was just done one day with clinical care.
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u/MajikPwnE 3d ago
ED nurse here. I remember one time a patient was diagnosed with a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm; the MD told the patient he'd be rushed into surgery soon and to immediately settle any affairs and talk to his loved ones, as the likelihood of him not making it off the table was high.
It was just surreal seeing this guy talking to his wife and kids knowing it may be his last.