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on the dead, and the dying. current song: map of the problematique by muse. their new album is tasty tasty shit. fear and panic in the air i want to be free from desolation and despair and i feel like everything i saw is being swept away when i refuse to let you go i can't get it right get it right since i met you loneliness be over when will this loneliness be over life will flash before my eyes so scattered and lost i want to touch the other side and no one thinks they are to blame why can't we see that when we bleed we bleed the same i can't get it right get it right since i met you loneliness be over when will this loneliness be over i hit that point, and i could block out the bad scenes: the d.o.a. kid on the motorcycle versus the semi; the man who walked to our cot and coded in his doctor's office; the little old woman who wanted so desperately to die and her body wouldn't let her go, even after days of starvation and skipped meds. but those were all one-shot deals. there was no relationship forged on three days a week, twice a day back and forth to dialysis or wound care. those are all the ones that kill me, the names i cry over when i read in the paper. carol was heavy, but the sweetest woman i'd ever met. and she was trying so hard...she was trying to get the weight off, and trying to take care of herself, and constantly apologized for being the way she was. and she was making marked improvement. and she was my favourite. i never minded picking her up, because she always had a smile on her face, no matter how bad she felt. and she died in her sleep, from a dissecting aortic aneurysm. it killed her in minutes, and when they found her, she was blue from the waist up, dead as a doornail. burt was cheerful, sweet, and full of all the beautiful history that he'd lived through. he was a golden gloves boxer and a world war II vet. he had great stories and told them in the way that you saw the movie in sepia tones in your head as he spoke. the nursing home that he was in didn't care about him, and he died from sepsis. his was preventable and infuriating; carol's death was a fluke. ron was old, and had his fair share of health problems including kidneys that no longer functioned. he was a hard lift, too; heavy and tall. but he was so funny, and so kind. the nursing home that he stayed in was a death farm, and they didn't like to be bothered with little things like talking to him or listening to what was wrong, so they kept him snowed. i'm not sure what his cause of death was, it wasn't in his obit. but his body had been giving out for weeks, and he was shooting the tubes no matter how doped they kept him. i'm sure that he just gave out. i'm hoping that he went peacefully in his sleep; a nap he never woke up from. bernice was the same way. trapped in a death farm. smart, funny, and sarcastic, but sweet when you were good to her. and her nursing home was (and is) also a death farm, and they kept her stoned beyond all recognition. there were days where she was so confused, and i'm sure that it wasn't all the meds and that she was slipping. i do know that there was a crew who found her almost unresponsive, and noted two duragesic patches on her, on top of the percocets and vicodin and ativan. the medic pushed some narcan in her and took her to the er. the problem with hospitals is that their emergency departments often don't care about older people who live in nursing homes, and they get them stable and send them back. and that's what happened to poor bernice - she died three days later, an "accidental" overdose. dorothy was a doll. she always wanted eric to sing to her, and he promised that he would sing happy birthday to her for her 82nd. he even learned it in polish for her. and i loved her, literally. she was gentle and sweet and pleasently confused, but she knew eric and i, and every time we picked her up her face brightened. she had terrible bedsores that never healed from being old and having terrible out of control diabetes, and she was constantly in pain. it broke my heart everytime we moved her, and i watched her face twist in pain, but she would always let it pass, and smile up at us. she wrote herself an obituary, and dated it for the day before her 82nd and sure enough, she went. it was time for her to die, and it was better for her. but god, it still makes me sad. and even though i know that this is killing me, i continue to love some of my patients as if they were family. i will truly mourn when betty or mildred go. i will weep when i lose shirley or ruth. but i can't stop myself. i can't. and i don't know what i'm going to do about it. but now, i'm going to push it all into the back of my head, and i'm going to try and get some sleep so i can do it all over again tomorrow. ~*~ immediate yesterday. ~*~ divination. ~*~ get your own guestbook here |
