This is no shit, CPR kills! I've been nursing for seven years now, 14 if you count the 7 years I spent as an unlicensed HTA and nearly 20 if you toss in the 4 and a half years I spent as a Hospital Corpsman in the navy and I have yet to see a case when CPR was initiated and the patient lived to tell about it. In fact, the only cases I've seen survive were the testemonials on the CPR instructional videos.
Maybe it's because the ones I've had to do CPR on were really sick, eaten up with cancer, or just to injured to make it; but I can't recall one who made it. I've seen them come back with advanced life support, electrocardioconversion, administration of epinephrine or atropine or other drugs, but not ever with CPR alone. I just had to do CPR last week on some poor guy who was eaten up with colon cancer. He didn't make it.
It was pretty ugly, to tell the truth. I must have cracked every rib in the poor son of a bitch's body and I'll venture to say I punctured a lung, lacerated a liver and God only knows what other damage was done as we tried to resucitate him. When it's my time to go - let me go. No CPR, no extensive life saving measures. Only God knows when it's our time and I only hope and pray I still have the facility of mind and body to make a decision about my own do not resucitate status before I lose my facilities .
I look at a do not resucitate order as a death with dignity decision. My grandmother did it and she died in her own home surrounded by her family quietly and as pain free as we could make her. My grandfather died some 40 days later in the hospital quite suddenly, we really didn't expect him to go, and the nurses coded him and did everything in their power to bring him back. I'm only glad I wasn't there to see it because I've coded people and it's not a pretty sight. When I came into the room they were just wheeling out the crash cart, had just declared him dead, and me - I go into clinical ER phase. I whip out my stethescope, assess the situation as I've been trained to do, and immediately search for a pulse, respirations, the whole nine yards. All the time there's this little voice in the back of my head saying" Mike, he's gone, you know he's gone, just let him go. There isn't a thing in your human power you can do no matter how much you love him." Let me tell you people, DNR ( do not resucitate) is the way to go.
Each and every DNR case I've had to care for has gone quietly and as pain free as we could possibly do. Surrounded by loved ones and people who care. I've watched them die, it's not easy, but it's a lot easier knowing that dying is very much a part of living and I did my best to make their passing as comfortable and easy as possible. Dying is hard, it's as hard as birth and being born. It's hard on the people one leaves behind, the nurses caring for the dying and, of course ,it's hard on the dying. The good news is - they're dead and in a better place, we're still here and have to contend with living.
You don't ever get used to it, I'll not ever get used to it. To get used to it is to be inhuman and unfeeling and I'm not like that. I may grow calloused to it and surround myself in my little shell, but it beats the hell out of drinking, doing drugs, or any of a number of other nightmares one can fall into in the guise of coping. I'm convinced all nurses suffer from some degree of post traumatic stress disorder.
I rarely discuss work at home with my wife, no matter how bad I want to. It's not worth all the explaining, making her worry, going back over the experience, no don't bring work home. I'll just come in, take a shower and go to bed. If the event was particularly traumatic or bad I might have one or two good stiff drinks to take the edge off but that's it - no more because then you're just opening the door to a much worse nightmare. I might discuss work with my mother-in-law, but she's a nurse with over 30 years experience. I might even talk shop with my co-workers out of work, but I try not to do that too much because then I'm just bringing work out of work and that's not good.
I do keep a journal, I do keep up with this blog and I'm happy and grateful to God I can cope effectively enough. I pray my rosary daily, it's good therapy and without it I'd probably be strung out on the bottle or worse. When I run or cycle or swim my thoughts might wander to work and what's happened there but I'm able to look it in the face and not run from it. I can still walk back into the unit and do my job, I can still go back into the very rooms where all the unpleasantness happened and work. I don't linger or let thoughts linger. I move on with my life and work. Thank God I'm not haunted by the spirits of those who have passed. I pray that they have forgiven me and that they go on to the light to heaven. I pray for each and every one I've had to care for in some way form or fashion who has died.
When I die, I hope and pray it's with dignity, pain free as possible, and that the passing is as good and easy as was the birth. After all, dying is very much a part of living.
