Strength to carry on

This weekend I experienced one of the hardest moments of my life. I've been in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for the last two weeks, and I have seen children make it through things I never want to think about again. On Saturday, one of our team's patients didn't make it. We had tried to keep him alive for a few weeks, but eventually even out last ditch efforts were obviously beginning to fail. Almost all of us, including me, knew that we needed to let him go, but we had been giving his family time to come to that realization as well. By Saturday, his mom was there, but his dad was still asking for more time.

I had to be in the room as our attending explained to this child's parents that we were rapidly running out of interventions to keep him alive. My attending comforted them by reminding them that their child was not awake and that he was not feeling pain. The chaplain and a family friend made it to the room, and I helped the nurses clean his broken little body as best we could. We disconnected his lines, we turned off his monitors, and finally they pulled out his breathing tube and the other tubes going down his nose and face.

None of us really knew this patient. He had never opened his eyes, never spoken, never woken up for the entire time we cared for him, yet through hearing his family speak about him and seeing pictures of him, we felt like we knew him. We all watched as this patient that we had fought so hard to save took a few shallow breaths and then stopped breathing. His parents began to cry, and I fought so hard not to cry myself. We stepped out of the room to give them time alone with their son before returning a few minutes later to make the final pronouncements.

It was interesting to see how the different members of the team responded to this. Some stood around joking about inane little things to take their minds off what happened, some immersed themselves in busy work, and some left our part of the unit entirely. Until Saturday, I had never been in the room when a child died, and it was every bit as hard as I anticipated, so I didn't know what to do to make this any easier for myself. As we had been in the room with the family, I found myself silently crying out to God for them, but after we left the room for the last time, I was too busy taking care of the patients I still had left to stop and focus on everything that had just happened.

This patient was not one of my normal patients. I had never been the main provider for him before; it had always been someone else, but due to shift requirements and work schedules, I was covering him for only four hours that day. Right before he was handed off to me, I knew how sick he was, and I found myself hoping that he wouldn't die on my shift. Initially I felt guilty for hoping that he would survive five hours instead of three, but when I realized the source of my fears, I didn't feel so bad. This was previously uncharted territory; I had never directly been in the room when a child died, and I didn't have a strong connection with the family. I didn't know what my role would be, and I was scared of doing the wrong thing. I am not personally afraid of death because I know what will happen to me when I die, but I was and still am afraid of death when it comes to others. As it became obvious that we wouldn't be able to keep him alive, I just began to pray that God would help me do the right things and be a tool in His hands.

After it was all over, I made the appropriate phone calls and filled out the necessary forms. His dad asked me if he could keep the blanket we had covered his child with so that only his face and shoulders, the least visibly damaged parts, would be seen. We heartily reinforced that this blanket and anything else they needed was theirs, and they thanked us before quietly slipping out, never to come back.

The chaplain found me later and thanked me "for everything," but it felt so ridiculous that she would thank me at all as I felt I hadn't done anything for them. She told me that on the way out of the hospital, our patient's mom had expressed that she didn't know why God had allowed this to happen but that He was in control and that she would continue to trust Him. Such amazing faith in the face of such tragedy! How I pray that my faith would be as strong!

I was at work for about an hour and a half more after the death before signing out to the night shift person. While I was there, I was able to smile and keep a cheerful appearance, but as soon as I stepped out of the hospital, I began to feel a huge weight being lowered down onto my shoulders. I called Hubby to let him know I was on my way home, and for once, I didn't feel like talking during the drive. I started to cry as drove down I-35 and began to call out to God for this family. I don't know if half of my words would have been intelligible to the human ear, but I know that God heard and understood me. After I got home, I just needed to be held by Hubby as I cried. Later he listened to me as I talked through the events of the day, and I was begin to process what had just happened.

I still don't have answers to make all of the pieces fit together. Why this happened will never make sense to me, but I have faith that God is good and that He works in ways I will never understand. I will continue to pray for this family and for myself that I may be a tool in His hands.