Something else...

I wanted to get this off my chest too.

We had a guy on our unit for a while. He came to us in bad shape, coded one morning, and found his equilibrium at the worse end of the scale. Not bad enough to go to the ICU, but bad enough. His family insisted on the works. They came in to visit fairly frequently while he was on the ventilator, pretty much completely unresponsive.

I guess the docs said that he was not going to ever get any better, and the family decided to withdraw support. And they left (if they even came in at all for this). They "refuse(d) to see him that way."

I come on shift, hear this in report, and decide to do his end of the hall first, there was only one patient on that end with him. I wanted to at least spend a little time in there with him, even if he was on what we called "comfort measures". (No vitals, no poking and prodding, just do what you can to make them comfortable.) I walked in, and he was already very obviously gone. I was saddened, and frustrated all at once. Nobody in a hospital should ever die alone. Especially not someone with a family capable of visiting. I got his nurse, and she notified the family. No. They still weren't coming in. We got him ready, and I just kept apologizing to him in my head. I wish I would have been there a little earlier so he wouldn't have been alone.

I realize that families deal with things in their own way, but the "not wanting to see him that way" just gets me. He had tubes, wires, and gadgets hooked up to every orifice and extremity, for weeks and that was OK, but take them away, and he suddenly is too painful to behold? If anything, he regained his dignity and became more like the man they knew before once all the gear had been removed.

He just shouldn't have died alone.