I smell dead people

These are just little essays and strange things I come across in daily life.


Death had never been a big part of my life until more than two years ago when I worked as a nurse on a paliative care ward (end of life). Before that the closest I came to death was stopping at the scene of an accident about four years ago. A woman died in my arms before the paramedics could get there. I was pretty shook up by that.


The first day I started working on the palliative care floor, during orientation, while we were checking on the patients, the second one we checked on was dead. While I was a little shocked and concerned, my mentor just patted his hand and said "Poor Mr. So and So" and moved on. So one of my first teachings was how to "bag and tag" a patient. Get them cleaned up, tied up, tagged and put in a body bag. I also had to take the person down to the morgue. I remember there were some college students who were helping me that day. They laughed at me when I would apologize to the "body" when taking out the IV, foley, etc. Since then, I can't even count how many times I've taken care of the body after death.


So, about three days ago, I had a patient die. Most of my patients are old and need to let go, so I usually am not too sad when I find them dead. I left the palliative care floor for the surgical floor about two years ago, and have not witnessed a death on my new floor since arriving. Until three days ago. He was my patient, and it came as a bit of a surprise..everyone thought he would hang on through the weekend.

We have all new nurses on the floor and a lot of times we'll have nurses coming from different floors to help out because our staffing is bad right now. I was the only one who knew how to "bag and tag" a patient. So I got help from one of the nursing assistants and we went in to take care of business. I was really surprised at how much I'd changed as far as this task. He had a bunch of wires...IV's, foley, colostomy bag, tracheostomy, etc. I just removed everything from the body quickly and smoothly. The nursing assistant had only done this once, so I was teaching her as I was taking care of the patient. I had to admit, it was like riding a bike. I remembered every little thing I had to do. The nursing assistant was impressed but a little concerned I knew so well how to "bag and tag" someone.


I don't think I've become callous with death. The last thing I say to a patient who has died is "Say hi to God for me". I guess you can get used to anything.
 
Written on Facebook:  Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 11:15am