The brightest spot ever

The spot in MY HEART!! hahaha. You know what I would really enjoy right now? For pharmacy to send me my chemo on time, for once. Cuz then I can, you know, give it on time. Which is nice for everyone.

The patient that I had four days in a row last week, my critical patient, died the morning after I left. Yup. One of my coworkers joked that he died as a result of poor nursing care the previous four days. Ha. The strange thing is, he was doing so well... I had weaned him off his Versed drip, he was on trach collar most of the day, etc. (For you non-nurses out there, those are very good things). And the nurse told me today that he just suddenly dropped his heart rate and they could never bring him back! Totally strange. It is kinda a blessing though, I mean, he was never gonna get better, probably. So might as well go quickly.

Does this seem crass to you non-nurses out there? I feel like nobody but a nurse could understand a nurse's attitude toward death.

I just found out that my little 20 year old patient with sickle cell anemia lost his graft- basically what that means is that he had a bone marrow transplant and the transplant didn't take- his body took it over and his sickle cell anemia is back. He doesn't even have any family in the room. I went in there and spent a little bit of time with him, asked him if he wanted to talk to me about it. Surprisingly enough, he removed his headphones and a small tear ran down his brown little cheek. "I don't know what is going to happen to me," he mumbled. I wish I had something to say to him, but what can you say? I told him it was OK to grieve over this; he has experienced a great loss and it's OK to let yourself cry about it. It's all part of the dirt and grime of life that I am lucky to be a part of.