Diary of a Trauma Nurse

Thursday, May 01, 2008

HE LET HER GO

Ok, so here it is guys…… my rant on making your loved ones DNR’s before they ROT in front of yours and our eyes. I DO understand how hard it must be to make that decision being a NON-medical person but please listen to those of us who ARE from the MEDICAL side!!!!! They are SUFFERING!!!!!! It is TORTURE!!!!!! We CANNOT give them enough pain medication to stop their pain because their blood pressure will not TOLERATE IT and YOU are the ones that say we HAVE to do everything to KEEP THEM ALIVE which means we have to keep their blood pressure WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS!!! I know you don’t realize that that means they are suffering beyond belief!!! I know you don’t realize that while we are in the room changing their bedding for the 5th time that day so they don’t lie in a pool of fluid that is oozing from their very pores, we are crying silently because you step out and don’t see the skin falling to the floor. You don’t see them crying out silently because they are now trached. You obviously don’t remember hearing them plead “Cory, no roll, please, no roll BEFORE they were tubed and then trached!!!!” It broke my heart each time I had to do it and without the additional pain medication or sedation that it would take so they wouldn’t feel the pain. What I have to say now is THANK YOU SO MUCH for FINALLY seeing the light. Although it took over a month of pain and suffering for this patient and multiple surgeries, and nothing short of pain and torture, it was the right thing to do to let her go. She would NOT have survived. She would NOT have come back from the gruesome being she had become. Her skin was literally falling from her body. She was rotting. She had infections few had heard of. She was in hell here on earth. She was freed, finally freed from the pain and torture and my hope and my prayers are that her husband does not suffer one day of guilt or uncertainty that he did the right thing. He didn’t let her die. He just didn’t prolong her suffering.

CoryTraumaRN posted today at 3:50 PM

Comments:

Cory, I understand what you mean, I am a burn trauna ICU nurse and we see this all the time as well. I loke the DNR jingle. Only ICU nurses would not think this morbid...lol.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:07 PM

Cory, I understand what you mean, I am a burn trauna ICU nurse and we see this all the time as well. I loke the DNR jingle. Only ICU nurses would not think this morbid...lol.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:07 PM

Thank. Always glad to hear from an understanding peer! I love the jingle as well! Thanks for taking the time to read!

# posted by

CoryTraumaRN : 3:12 PM

What I so find distressing is when doctors give their patients false hope. I mean, here is the patient literally rotting away- you can friggin smell the sweet smell! And yet their doctor tells the family and the patient that they can expect to be discharged soon. I feel so uncomfortable with this. Here is this person having literally having limbs amputated due to their system shutting down- who are these doctors kidding? The patient, now trached, is begging for it all to end- yet no-one is listening to them, they have truly lost their voice. Yet how do you speak frankly to the family about the code status when the doctor is telling them not to worry? The You Tube video truly tells the truth. The general population is becoming so much more self-educated regarding their medical care- I wish more of them could truly understand this part prior to being admitted.

# posted by

aemtbugs : 9:12 PM

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