As nurses you become desensitized to a lot, but once in a while a wtf moment hits you.Yesterday, because of sick calls they had me helping in the cardiovascular ICU. Halfway into the shift an elderly Asian gentleman passed away; it was not unexpected as most of the family had been called and were at the bedside.
After he passed, the family wanted to spend more time with him and have their 6-year-old granddaughter come into the room to say goodbye. The patient had been on a ventilator with lines and tubes inserted into every possible orifice and extremity. It would have been a scary site to most, but why subject a 6 year old to this?
Anyway we had the family go to the waiting room as we fully gowned and masked up. Because of his condition we knew there would be extensive body fluids everywhere; also bathing and turning a dead patient requires a lot of contact.
The air in the room smelled horrible as we started pulling lines, tubes and clean up the man's body. Then the two nurses with me started exchanging recipes for some type of bread pudding dish.
I laughed a little and found it is sad, because while cleaning up that poor dead man's smelly fluids, their talk actually made me hungry.
5 comments:
hah-yes we are nurses. we talk bodily fluids over dinner, and talk dinner over bodily fluids.
Well, suppose that's life in a hospital!
Mmmm, bread pudding.... But, hmmm, later. ;)
Thanks for sharing, and for doing a good, although here a rather unsavory, job.
Cheers,
Headstrong
I always get hungry after a session in the DR, though I'm told that's because of a side-effect of exposure to formaldehyde!
Last offices is always a weird experience, though - the mix of routine and yet incredibly intimate activity.
On L&D...we would often have a semi-transparent bucket with a placenta in it next to the bowl of popcorn....and didn't really think anything of it.....
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