Chvi

one of those experiences

hmmm. if your not use to reading rather morbid things...turn away now. oh yes. bc its abt to become reflection time.

so on thursday, i went to ICU for a tute. i walked out of it slightly changed and to tell you the truth, unsure of the purpose of the last bit of the tute. the dr took us in to see one of the patients. 5 of us shuffled into the small cubicle. the curtains closed. i looked at the patient, watching her sleep. she looked quite uncomfortable. her head was hanging to a side, and her face quite pale. my thoughts: she must be quite sick.

the dr. then told us: this patient is dying. well that worked w my quite sick theory. then the dr said these next few words: well, actually in the community she probably would be considered dead.

us students were shocked. probably dead?? what?

dr: atm, she has no pulse. she's not breathing. the only thing preventing us from calling her death is that her heart still has electricity in it.

we looked at the monitor and it showed that her heart was still beating at 50. the dr continued the tute inside this cubicle. while that patient, lying there, dying (or was dead), her conscious mind gone now for hrs (perhaps days) and he was talking abt circulatory failure. he showed us her charts. he told us the typical pattern that the electrical currents from the heart do when someone is dying/can be offically called dead. the dr then looked at the monitor, encouraged us to look too, to see the pattern. it was probably 15 mins since we walked into that cubicle. and as i watched, her heart rate went from 50 to 28 and then it went to 0.

she was now dead. in ICU terms, the pt died in front of me. the nurse looked at her watch and mentally took note. no one actually called: "time of death ...".

i walked out of ICU still puzzled by the teaching experiencing of it all. it was confronting to say the least, but i'm confused. i don't particularly want to see patients die. sure it was her time (as explained by the dr) but i didn't know her. we didn't even get a name. maybe it was for our protection, but i felt like i had no right to be there to watch her go. i kept wondering why the family wasn't there. why the family didn't want to say goodbye. as i walked out, the waiting room outside ICU had 3 ppl in it. they were all crying. my guess, it was the patient's family. and unbeknownst to them, i had watched their relative die. someone, who had only met this patient for 15 mins. i knew her medical condition, i knew her time was up but she was almost not human to me. u know why? bc she was dead by the time i saw her. just the electrical currents in her. somehow, it just didn't seem like it should have been done. the other weird thing of it of course, is that other patient's in ICU had their relatives come in and visit them. most of them smiled at us. most of the smiled away, oblivious that in the cubicle next to them...someone died.

Most patients from ICU get an autopsy. i was next in line to see an autopsy so, w warning, i somehow knew i'd be seeing the same patient being opened up. and that's exactly what happened on friday. i was in the autospy room, w my scrubs on and covered from head to toe w protect...and on the table was her. the patient i watch die. her chest opened, her internal organs out ready to be examined.

i weighed her organs. i palpated them. i washed them. i inspected the pathology in them. and after that, i left.

i think the next post will be solely abt the autopsy and the experience of it. i'll detach that blog from referring to the patient. i didn't think abt it while i was there but the person's insides i saw, she was alive just a day before. she was someone's mother, sister, friend. i didn't know her. not even remotely. but she died in front of me, and i saw her autospy.

there's just something nagging abt it that i can't put down in words. Death doesn't seem so symbolic anymore. there is almost no feeling to it. weird experience that.

posted by chvi @ 5:41 PM