Saturday, June 25, 2005
Some of the following may offend people who have relatives or friends who have died, so please read no further if that is you.
*sighs* Two patients died on me in 1 week. Both were expected, but I had to clean both of them up and send them down to the morgue when the families at left. Looking after a dead person is a very strange experience all in all. You go into their room, because everything has to be take out before you send them to the morgue and inevitably they have some attachments, catheter, IV line... So you go in to take this stuff out and it is so hard to know whether to talk to their body or to talk to yourself, or to be quiet or what. Tonight was one of the funny ones, I am sure this guy would have laughed if he was still alive and watching us. We had closed the door after the family had left and were waiting for the doctor to come and pronounce him dead (even though we all knew he was gone). Well the dinner/food services lady went in and left his dinner for him, hehehe, somehow, I don't think he was very hungry, he didn't touch the food. Probably cause at this stage he was stiff as a board from being dead most of the afternoon. Thank goodness the family had already gone.
I am getting a little better with the whole internal debate about putting the body in a shroud and zipping it into a bag. There is still that little voice in my head telling me you can't cover their face because they cannot breathe when you do it, but the part of me that knows they are dead sorta rules it out when it speaks up. The other thing you tend to do in the dead persons room is be really quiet, yes its somewhat due to respect for the dead, but I can't work it out otherwise. Heck, you aint gonna wake them up or disturb them are you? I opted to the talking to this guy, I couldn't help it, had looked after him for 4 shifts while he was dying, I felt he deserved something as I took all his attachments out and got him ready to leave the ward for the last time.
Man that is just too wierd. I was in a room talking to a dead guy.
The guy I washed and bagged the other day farted as we rolled him to put him in the bag... *hears the twilight zone music in her head* How is that for freaky?
Anyways it is now 1:10am and I have wound down enough to try and go to bed.... maybe even to get to sleep!
Laters
*sighs* Two patients died on me in 1 week. Both were expected, but I had to clean both of them up and send them down to the morgue when the families at left. Looking after a dead person is a very strange experience all in all. You go into their room, because everything has to be take out before you send them to the morgue and inevitably they have some attachments, catheter, IV line... So you go in to take this stuff out and it is so hard to know whether to talk to their body or to talk to yourself, or to be quiet or what. Tonight was one of the funny ones, I am sure this guy would have laughed if he was still alive and watching us. We had closed the door after the family had left and were waiting for the doctor to come and pronounce him dead (even though we all knew he was gone). Well the dinner/food services lady went in and left his dinner for him, hehehe, somehow, I don't think he was very hungry, he didn't touch the food. Probably cause at this stage he was stiff as a board from being dead most of the afternoon. Thank goodness the family had already gone.
I am getting a little better with the whole internal debate about putting the body in a shroud and zipping it into a bag. There is still that little voice in my head telling me you can't cover their face because they cannot breathe when you do it, but the part of me that knows they are dead sorta rules it out when it speaks up. The other thing you tend to do in the dead persons room is be really quiet, yes its somewhat due to respect for the dead, but I can't work it out otherwise. Heck, you aint gonna wake them up or disturb them are you? I opted to the talking to this guy, I couldn't help it, had looked after him for 4 shifts while he was dying, I felt he deserved something as I took all his attachments out and got him ready to leave the ward for the last time.
Man that is just too wierd. I was in a room talking to a dead guy.
The guy I washed and bagged the other day farted as we rolled him to put him in the bag... *hears the twilight zone music in her head* How is that for freaky?
Anyways it is now 1:10am and I have wound down enough to try and go to bed.... maybe even to get to sleep!
Laters
10:45 AM
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Writing since January 2003!
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BJ T now was S
Born in April on the 21st!
Australian but living in the USA.
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