Years ago my couple month old nephew nearly died. We still don't really know why, it just sort of happened. He's better now and is a happy kid in elementary now. But for a night there we thought we were going to loose him. A few months later we got this email from a nurse that helped save his life.
Dear /u/aveygt’s family,
I didn't want to send this until I knew that /u/aveygt's nephew was home and doing well. That night in the KCH ER touched me deeply and I will carry its memory with me forever. One of the things that saddened me the most was that I could not connect with you, the family, and comfort you during one of the worst nights of your life. So this, now, is my gift to you. With love, A Young Nurse
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Friday, September 29, 2006
5:55 A.M.
Tonight I held a tiny scrap of humanity in my hands as he fought for his life. For a few moments I was his breath, filling his little lungs with oxygen, trying to mimic the rhythm of life which we take for granted. I've rarely felt so helpless.
It never ceases to amaze me how tiny babies can be. I've held strapping ten-pounders, and helped care for preemies tiny enough to fit into my cupped hands; with each one I wonder at how life can be so perfectly captured and sustained in these little beings. They seem too fragile for this cold world. And this one...this one was one of the most beautiful little babies I've ever seen. So small, but so perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes. Smooth, creamy, translucent skin. A shock of soft, silky light brown hair covering his whole head. Button nose and pink little mouth. Wide grey-blue eyes. Unseeing eyes...fixed on a far-off point above the heads working frantically over him.
Whenever we participate in a code, we try to do it right, do it well, save our patients, no matter who they are. But with pediatric codes, everything gets just a little more tense, a little more desperate. "Don't screw up now," our faces say to each other. "Do it faster, better...be perfect this time," says the edge in our voices as we bark out orders and vital signs to each other. "If any of us can work a miracle, let it be now. Please, God, let it be now." But we can't. We wear the uniforms, we take the classes, we work the protocols, we act like we know what to do...but we are the same as the frail, fallible humans we try to save and mend every day. We know some tricks to help keep the spark of life smoldering a little longer, to help kindle it back into flame; but in the end we are just like anyone else, whispering, "Come on, baby, breathe. Get warm, baby. Wake up, baby. Come back, baby."
Come back. It's not your time yet. It can't be. In your tiny form I see the unwritten potential of a thousand different life stories. I want to see you grow up to be as tall and handsome as your father, to have your mother's kind eyes and laughing face. I want to know how you will make this world better. I want you to live and love and weave a bright thread into the fabric of time's story. Come back, baby. Can't you hear your mommy and daddy calling you? Their low, broken voices reach out, trying to comfort you in that grey, quiet place where your little soul hangs in limbo, trying to tell you how much they love you, how much they've come to need and want you in the few short weeks of your life. Please come back...please, God, let him come back.
An hour later, he was airlifted to another hospital, his spark flickering, barely alight. Our job was done, and silence descended on the room were we had fought for him as best we could. As we soberly returned to our other patients, we silently wondered if we could have done any more, if we had done enough to save him. Often we never find out after they leave our hospital. We see death on a daily basis, but things like this just don't get routine. Several of the ER staff had to leave the floor for a few minutes and came back red-eyed and shaken. I was almost ashamed that I could not cry, could not give vent to the dull sad ache I felt. But tears rarely help when you have a job to get done.
When I mentioned my stoicism to one of my coworkers later, she just smiled. "A lot of times, you don't cry. Even when you go home, you don't cry. But mark my words, you won't sleep." And she was right. Even after being up for almost twenty-four hours straight, I am still awake, still in that room, with his hand curled around my finger, helping him breathe.
Hang on, baby. Hang on.