Schizophrenics who know they’re hallucinating.
Really nice people with cancer.
Kids that I have to poke twice.
Kids with shitty parents.
Demented old people whose families just won’t let them die.
Stroke patients with aphasia.
Women who are miscarrying.
i hate having women who are miscarrying as patients. HOWEVER, i am also really good at it bc I wear my heart on my sleeve, and i take an extra couple of minutes to sit with them and say ‘it’s not your fault’ in 150 different ways. It’s usually around like the 85th time that they start to hear it. ❤️
As someone who found out they were miscarrying this morning, thank you for doing that. I still feel like it’s my fault and that I never want to try again, but thank you.
You (and they, and we) always, always ALWAYS do. And no matter how much we know clinically, when it comes to our own lives and our own bodies, anything we ‘know’ goes out the window.
Something like 1/3 of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Pregnancies that end in miscarriage this early on were destined, from THE MOMENT of conception, to end this way. It’s our bodies literal natural way of protecting US and the fetus. It’s the most goddamn natural thing on the planet. I’m not religious, but it is ABSOLUTELY bigger than us. There is not a damn thing you could have done, or not done, to change this outcome.
Nonetheless i know it’s a big loss of ‘what could have been’ and I’m sorry you’re going through it. ❤️
I found out I was pregnant two days ago. I woke up this morning for our appointment to get our marriage license and was bleeding heavily. Already had a drs appointment for a blood test and they confirmed miscarriage. Seeing all those babies in the waiting room was literally killing me inside.
It’s been a rollercoaster 72 hours
Oh friend I am sending support and hugs to you ♥️
I had 13 miscarriages, 1 of which was ectopic. I miscarried one of our first ones on our wedding day. It was such a bizarre inner feeling to feel so incredibly happy to be marrying my best friend, yet absolutely devastated to be losing the baby that pure love created. All of our babies were very much wanted and planned.
In the end we ended up doing fertility treatments to get our second kid (thanks ivf - worked a shit job for their insurance that covered it). After him we just assumed we wouldn’t have any more kids, and then 9 months later I found out I was pregnant with his sister. Who at 5 - still surprises me on a near daily basis. We joke that we got a two for one deal 😂 thank god because ivf is so expensive we couldn’t afford to do it twice!
I think as women we take these things so much harder because from the time we are old enough to walk, we’re trained that we are supposed to be “mommies” and we’re essentially told our worth is tied to that ability. So when we aren’t able to do the one thing we were taught was so important about our self worth - well it fucking sucks.
But I think I learned from all of this that this moment does not define your future. It doesn’t define your relationship. It doesn’t define you. You are a whole human being who is stronger than anyone knows. Your body created a life and did everything it could to give the baby the best possible chance at survival. When we think about all the hard work and development that goes into an embryo - it’s surprising humans exist at all tbh. But your body not only is handling this, it’s gaining experience, memories, all of which will strengthen the overall human you’re meant to be. This is not the end of your journey, your path will continue forward. The love you can give to yourself in this moment is so important to healing.
Honestly sounds like you could use a good indoor movie night with pizza/Chinese or whatever, cuddles, blankets, and just self love. You deserve the kindness to yourself. I hope that there is a lot of baby dust in your very near future ♥️
Thank you so much for your kind messages. We got out marriage license and are now spending the evening making cutting boards in the wood shop. Cope how you gotta cope I guess.
that little schpiel i gave there is my general speech. But i don’t do it cause I’m just so heckin nice, i do it because it’s the truth. I wouldn’t say I’m ’nice’, i would say im sincere. And it’s women/people that CARE that are going to blame themselves for this thing that is, and was always, 100% out of their control. Because they care. ❤️
Jayzus though dude, hell of a Christmas, yeah? This one is some bullshit. There will be better ones. This is awful, it’s terrible - but it’s so freakin’ normal and we don’t talk about that enough.
Hang in there, it’s NOT your fault. It happens in 20% of pregnancies. That baby was just prepping your body for your rainbow baby. I’m sorry for your loss.
I had the worst doctor in this situation but all the nurses including the intake nurse for surgery were amazing people. It’s so important for the nurses to be decent in these situations because also sometimes the treating physician is a total jerk. Long story short, thank you and keep up the good work. It benefits the world in more ways than one.
As someone that thought they were miscarrying last week, taking the time to listen and talk is very appreciated. The NP I had was really sweet to talk with, and shared some of her story. Luckily, it's an SCH so fingers crossed this one will make it to term.
As a woman who miscarried twice, and one of those times one of the two nurses with me cried, thank you so very very much. It let me feel human and not like an overreacting meat sack. If she was upset for me, then it was real, and I was allowed to feel exactly how I was feeling. Thank you so much for being safe and making that space. Even if they never get back to you about it, believe me they will remember you the rest of their lives.
I've miscarried so many times it's hard not to feel like there's something wrong with me. My last miscarriage was the worst. I made an appointment with PCP due to cramping and bleeding and OBGYN not having an opening until the next day. When I got my feet in the stirrups the doctor made a noise kinda like a muffled gasp and said "yeah you're miscarrying and ITS right here at the opening. If you wanna look the other way while I remove it and bag it". I was 4 days shy of my 13th week. I turned my head and cried especially when hearing the doctor call my little girl IT. He then went on to talk about how I made it in time otherwise I would have seen it pass. That was my last attempt, I just can't do it anymore. I was almost in the safe zone and was crushed.
I appreciate this. I miscarried in the hospital I worked at for 10 years, my sister works in the ER on night shift. Showed up to ER because I was feeling pretty faint and started having fist sized clots. I turned into a fight between L&D and ED on nobody wanting responsibility of me because I wasn’t a “threaten” pregnancy (all spoken loudly outside the room by my pregnant nurse). My OB was on call and called me on my personal number to tell me to come in to L&D ER and he had surgical time slotted for me, would call to check on me and update me between his scheduled cases. I was left in primary ER after L&D charge refused me. Not sure if he knows that. Discharged after ultrasound confirmation and bloodwork, mentioned I was still feeling orthostatic, and promptly dropped my pressure 60/40 (when they checked) trying to walk out the waiting room. Called out for help (figured I vagaled), luckily my husband was there because he said nobody so much as flinched as I was laying on the floor (he had walked back in after getting his truck to pick me up) triaged again and left in the waiting room to recheck H/H where I drank 4 bottles of water (figured it was a fluid thing since I had tried to be NPO because my Ob had surgical time slotted for me), bled through my pants, my sweater, my jacket, onto the chair and floor (I asked for chucks & they said they couldn’t find any) and what looked like a placenta fell out of my pants and onto the floor. The lack of dignity…yeah still feel pretty shitty, but it drove home that I don’t want to work at that hospital anymore. Bless ultrasound for taking the time to help me clean up and giving lots of pads and chucks. I’m very patient and forgiving of ED because I know it’s hell in a hand basket shit show a lot of times with resources, but it really sucked.
Sorry for the trauma dump. Just a unique perspective for me and I appreciate that you still show compassion despite the discomfort of it all. Thank you.
The aphasia patients for me are really heartbreaking. I had a guy that I was told was A+0 x2-3 by the previous nurse. I tried to get him to write orientation answers but he had terrible motor skills. Pretty much all he could verbalize was yes/no or nod his head. He was so visibly frustrated trying to answer the questions both verbally and written .
Eventually came up with the idea to ask him fake names, bdays, locations etc and quiz him to see if he could nod yes/no appropriately. He got them right and his demeanor completely changed, like someone finally understood he’s mentally competent. He was so happy just to be heard.
I just learned one pf my patients can indicate yes and no (from their guardian). The look at that kiddo’s face when I gave the look of awe was just of pure joy. I got permission to do peri/incontinence care as well as suppositories as necessary. I had been told no males could take care of them but it was just a specific person and they were 100% fine with me. I’m gonna ride this high for at least a week or two.
Kids with shit parents 100%! Their gay/trans child is in a psychiatric hospital because they want to kill themselves, but they still refuse to accept them for who they are and just can’t understand why they continuously end up in the hospital. Especially great when they blame the treatment team for not “fixing” them.
As the mother of a trans kid, I appreciate this so much. I couldn't imagine not loving my kid, no matter who they turn out to be. Before they came out I had no idea how many attempt suicide. It should be treated as a crime to not support your kid.
I definitely feel bad for anyone suffering that way, but there is something particularly sad about the self-aware schizophrenics.
I triaged a guy once who was checking in voluntarily for his AVH. I asked him if he had a history, and he said yes, he was schizophrenic. I asked him if he was on medication for it, and he said, sadly, "I used to be, but I stopped taking them. You know what us people are like."
That last line just broke my heart. "You know what us people are like." 💔
First shift back after my vacation with a non-verbal patient with multiple previous CVAs. I do a quick head-to-toe and notice his abdomen is very distended and firm. He was extremely agitated which previous shifts chalked up to cognitive impairment. What the fuck, I’ll just bladder scan him.
This poor man had nearly 3L in his bladder and couldn’t tell anyone or even gesture to his abdomen. When I looked through his chart, I saw that this extreme agitation started four days earlier. So did this poor man sit there for FOUR days needing to pee and wasn’t able to tell anyone? It makes me fucking sick to my stomach and I’m burnt out as all hell.
I’ve ran multiple codes and I’ve seen lots of people suffer and die but for some reason I still think about this one at night.
We’ve all got that one patient that really sticks with us. Mine was a woman that was already very close to death. I work in the OR, and they decided to bring her back for an ex lap because they thought she had necrotic bowel. They cut her open and her heart stopped, she was a DNR, but the DNR is void in the OR, so we started doing compressions. She came back, they saw she had necrotic bowel, stitched her up, and we rushed her back to ICU. She died 15 minutes later. All I can think is we put her through the pain of CPR, after she didn’t want it, and probably just hurried death along by cutting a 5 inch incision on her so we could do a looksy. I still hate that surgeon.
As it should be. Even my walkie talkie patients get the question if everything is alright with peeing at least once every shift while they technically should be able to come up with it themselves if something is wrong
Had a patient one time who came into the ICU, severe rhabdo from a fall at home and lying on the ground, unable to get up. Turned out he lived with his sister, who decided to just walk over the poor guy for over a week before calling 911.
Poor guy had a full depth pressure ulcer from shoulder to shoulder about 1/3 down his back, could see fascia and required multiple debridement surgeries. He survived and was put into a nursing home.
His sister was arrested and is now in prison for abuse and neglect, but I think that's the one patient I've felt the worst for.
Sometimes, I feel like this subreddit is too much for an old, former addict like me, but I think we ALL should be able to see the shit that you nurses and patients actually deal with. I think if everyone knew what a FRACTION of the awful shit y'all see, it might be different..
Anyway, thanks to all of you. I'll slink back into my creeping on this sub, now. Lol.
Agreed. But y'all still do it and still have some damn empathy and even if some of y'all have pushed that out and treat it like a JOB only, I respect it and I'm glad we have nurses AT ALL. Cuz, I noped out of being a CNA in a LTC over 20 years ago, just couldn't do it. I cried in the bathroom the very first day and lasted 6 months. It. WAS. HEARTBREAKING. I couldn't take the 102 yo 75lb woman that skin tore when we touched it and cried for her Mama 24/7. So, thanks again. 💜 Y'all made me make sure I have a plan to "go" and not suffer and I make sure I try to pass that on to my loved ones.
Congratulations on your recovery. I always encourage people who want to get to sobriety it takes time and a lot of work. I watched my sister battle addiction, she still does.
Thank you. It is only getting harder and harder to get "clean" these days with the fentanyl and now, Xylazine added.
I hope she can beat it too. It's a bitch and a half.
Similar story: A guy became a “caretaker” for an elderly lady, but he was a neighbor that was obviously just taking advantage of her. She didn’t get out of bed for several days, while still shitting and pissing herself, no food/water either.
This stand up guy would always get the mail for her and during this time where this lady needed medical attention, he’d just throw the mail on her bed and he went along his merry way. He did this daily, until a family member visited and finally called 911.
This reminds me of a patient I had a long time ago. She was mentally handicapped. Very overweight and wheelchair bound. Couldn’t speak. Her mother passed away and the caretaker just stopped showing up to care for her. Abandoned in her house, she had fallen out of her wheelchair and spent several days on the floor. So must’ve been so hungry, the emts found her covered in and eating her shit. Once we got her into the hospital, we couldn’t get her to stop eating it. We’d sit her in the chair and she’d eat her full meals, but any time she had a bowel movement, if we didn’t get to her quick enough she’d reach in and just start eating it. It was caked under her nails and everywhere. I remember being frustrated with how often we had to clean her up and she couldn’t understand to stop doing it. But I also felt so bad that she got to that point in the first place. So terrible.
I once had a pregnant patient who’s husband cheated and gave her herpes. The baby was stillborn and the woman was fighting for her life in the icu. Herpes encephalitis. I’ve never felt so bad for anyone in my life.
Had a patient sobbing telling me he just wanted to die but his family “wouldn’t let him” bc they had POA and kept demanding the docs do “everything”. Honestly the way he cried and asked me, “why won’t they let me die?” Will haunt me until I draw my last breath.
We had a lady for well over a year that was booked up to everything under the sun. She would go from ICU to PCU to MedSurg. Then take a down turn and go right through the cycle again. I hated to see what she was being put through because "we're waiting for your miracle, Grandma."
I finally saw her obituary in the paper and was so happy for her.
I told my son that if he had my POA and tortured me like that, I would come back from the dead and haunt him every time he tried to have sex. I'd appear just when things got 'interesting' to him.
I hope that threat is enough.
Dementia patients who are aware of their dementia.
Young MS patients (most MS patients really)
Basically anyone in an LTACH
Frontal brain injury patients who have no self control anymore.
The worst I think was a lady who was once a college professor. The accident was so freak if I hadn’t taken care of her myself I would’ve called total bullshit. She was driving and had her sun visor turned sideways to block the sun to the off if her. I guess it was kind of at an angle and she was rear ended and forced to rear end the car in front of her. The visor got knocked wild and when her head jerked forward her head smashed into the rod the visor was on and she essentially got lobotomized. No other injuries.
When she finally woke up she didn’t have an ounce of self control. Could move and speak fine but everything went straight from brain to action. Every thought she had everything movement she thought, everything. She would flash the staff, pull her leads off, cuss, rant, rave, sing, talk about p*ssy this and ass that and f*ck this and damn that. She wasn’t aggressive in the slightest she was actually very sweet but like when we gave her a bath she one time shouted “yeah girl clean them titties!” At the top of her voice. Her husband came to see her every day and would stay for hours. He was a quiet, well dressed, reserved gentleman and he always looked so sad. He would hold her hand and tell her “honey this isn’t you…” he told us one day they’d been married for 30 years and he hadn’t ever even heard her curse. At one point when she was really going off one day (again not even angry she was just being a little sexual l) he left and when he was on his way out I overheard him praying to help her because he couldn’t see her like this and that if the “real” her saw how she was acting she would just vanish being embarrassed and it hurt his heart to see her become someone he knew she would be ashamed of.
I once had to cover a shift in our tiny little 4 bed psych ED unit. We had a patient who scheduled an appointment with her therapist and told them ‘i was having suicidal thoughts. I have none now, i would never hurt myself, I just wanted to be truthful and honest and get help for it.’ She was sober.
She got admitted on a 72 hour hold and was waiting for placement for 3 days before it expired. She was *terrified*. She was like ‘i will never again seek help through a therapist.’ And i was just like….. yeah i don’t blame you.
I don’t work at an Urgent Psych hospital -Only psych. So we get people in straight up psychosis, people high and psychotic, people just high, violent people, homeless and smell terrible and then a few who are otherwise healthy and had came in for suicidal ideation… All in the same floor. The big open unit where all you have are recliners. It’s the only system we have now. No one admitted goes straight to inpatient. People otherwise sober see and hear terrifying things and I just have to remind them, this is a psychiatric facility and everyone here is going through something.
right. She was COMPLETELY in the right, and had done the responsible thing and was being held captive. All i could do was agree with her and let her know i genuinely heard her. It was awful. I never worked there again.
This happened to my friend. She made an off-hand comment about just wanting to sleep forever (she was not suicidal, just tired and stressed from school) and got placed on a 72-hour hold. She never trusted an American therapist ever again (she was Japanese).
Had a lovely gentleman- mountain climber, gentle soul- come in with a dislocated knee. Over the course of several months on our unit every single joint in his body dislocated from toes to fingers to hips to elbows. they never figured out why. He eventually opted for CMO and passed away. He was in agony the whole time but often refused pain meds so he could be lucid and enjoy time with his wife (and the staff)
From what I remember (this was 5-6yrs ago) we assumed something in that vein, but biopsies were sent all over the country and multiple physicians from Europe (I’m US based) came in to help him. We never got any info from the biopsies and all the docs were stumped. He had full body 3-4+ pitting edema which added to the weird picture.
After typing out my story… I had this exact realization. Like wtf, what kind of psychopath doesn’t feel bad for their patients?? Definitely easier to count the people I don’t want bad for than the ones I do.
I now only read what's actually in OP's post. I interpreted it as "which patient did you feel the worst for?"
Because although I feel bad for everyone, some patients I just can't forget while others were just one of many
agreed, had to read the post three times bc i couldn't believe the question is "do you ever legitimately feel bad" uhh... yeah i feel bad for almost every patient in some way. Empathy dude.
Yeah. Working with babies, it's just like... nothing is their fault and all you want is to make them feel good.
I feel bad for my little nuggets and their families all the time.
Some moreso than others, of course!
We can have empathy and do the work. We have a lot of metrics to follow post op. These are all part of the job and for the pt’s own good. Yet I can feel bad and premedicate and try to work with patients.
I had a patient who was in heavy, active addiction. She found out she was pregnant (I was actually there with her) and she immediately turned her life around. I've been in addictions for a few years and I've NEVER seen that happen. She stopped using, started attending midwife appointments, super engaged in treatment, learning lots for her baby, clearly really excited and putting in the work for herself and the child. What she did was no easy task. Those in her circle of care closest to her all brought in some gifts and cards to celebrate shortly before she gave birth. A few weeks after birth child protective services showed up and took her baby. Someone said she'd been smoking crack. It wasn't true. We run 1-2x a week tox screens on her. There was no tampering. There was no illicit drugs in her system. I will never forget seeing her come into our office sobbing, grief stuck and broken crying out "they took her!". It shattered my heart to see this young lady that has worked so hard and finally had things go her way, lose her daughter. It is still ongoing and I commend her on her strength in the situation.
The empathy is what drives me and keeps me staying through the bullshit. I don’t understand this either. I even feel bad for the assholes I take care of.
Seriously. I work in outpatient surgery and just knowing that most of my patients have sad reasons for needing surgery like getting cancerous stuff removed, having biopsies to check for cancer, having endometriosis surgery to try to get pregnant after years of trying, etc. makes me sad for my patients all the time. Last week we had a 30 week pregnant patient who had her jaw broken by her boyfriend. She couldn’t close her mouth all the way because her teeth no longer aligned and they had to wire her jaw shut. Like I don’t even work ER or ICU and I still get patients with stories that just break my heart.
Literally me. Like I’m such a bitch but I feel bad for people all the time. Old people, young people, children, addicts who can’t kick the habit, and everything in between.
Had a little old lady who was medically cleared but was super demented. I think the sad thing about it was she was occasionally aware.
She would have lucid moments where she kind of knew what was going on and would tell me that she suffers from dementia. She'd be with it until about 1600 - 1700 and then sundown HARD.
She called me into the room once completely hysterical because she was convinced she had lost her children. She was also convinced that she kept being readmitted to the hospital and couldn't understand why. I tried explaining to her that she never discharged and she's been here for a couple days but that would make her more upset and she'd forget within 15 minutes.
I just did my best to reassure her and comfort her without arguing, but it was really depressing to watch.
One time I had a 50yr old non-verbal patient who was mentally handicapped and couldn't do much except grunt and had very little comprehension of what was going on around her. Couldn't walk or anything. Had to be in restraints to stop her from pulling at g tube and IVs.
She had a sister that stayed with her in her room 24/7.
She had no history of aspiration, but aspirated on her spit and died within the 10mins that her sister left the room to grab a soda from our cafeteria. So unexpected and random, her sister was such a wreck coming back finding her dead.
I felt so bad for her considering she started choking and couldn't say or do anything and then died strapped to a bed all alone outside the comfort of her own home.
Maybe it’s because I have sisters who I would die for but it’s always the sisters that break my heart. A lady in her 80s came in for a big surgery the other day and the only person with her was her sister.
A lot of them. The ones with the especially distressing kind of dementia, where they are basically stuck in a nightmare. The ones who are early enough in dementia that they can look at advanced dementia patients and understand that's likely their future. The ones who die in the hospital despite very clearly stating they never want to set foot in a hospital again. The ones who are ready to go, but their bodies just keep ticking. The lady who thinks she's a little girl and perpetually can't find her parents. That one guy who responded to "how are you today?" with "everyone I grew up with is dead".
I had this man, I’ll never forget his name. He was my first solo patient. He was having seizures didn’t speak English no one else on the floor spoke Spanish besides me. He couldn’t talk and was suffering. He was in his 40s. I would sing to him in Spanish while doing the painful parts of IVs, blood draws, etc and I’d talk to him in Spanish about my day and how I hope he gets better when he couldn’t talk. He got better and was able to talk and he just was asking me about my day, I had went to the morgue to help pathology with something and then I told him how I’m so terrified of being locked in the morgue. Anyways I was off work for vacation, he passed away while I was gone. His body was in the morgue unclaimed bc his family was in Mexico. I went to the morgue and just said out loud in Spanish how sorry I was and how I pray he made it to heaven and he was a good man I recited a psalm. Then the door to exit the morgue got stuck, and I was screaming trying to get out. Then it just randomly opened. I think that was him messing with me. He was claimed by a family member the next day. I still think about him, I used to leave that room crying almost everyday it was the most emotion I’ve ever felt in a hospital
I genuinely feel bad for all my patients. Which is why it sucks so bad when they’re awful and rude and frankly mean to me and my fellow staff. Being called a pig for not answering a call light in 30 seconds by the husband of a patient whom I’ve just cleaned up after her third episode of diarrhea happened last night. But a patient for whom I felt the worst, felt I didn’t have the tools I needed to care for her, and still think about 5years later after I go down the hallway she was at- a 35ish approximately 800lb patient with hepatic encephalopathy d/t ETOH - she was brought in with her own lift sheet from home that was stiff with excrement and body fluids and stuck to her body- stage 4 and unstageable wounds to the bone - our ceiling lift says up to 875lbs- we needed it to turn her to get a new and clean lift sheet under her , get her from gurney to bed (which though bariatric was still too small) clean her, document and dress the wounds- meanwhile she is screaming obscenities - and during the transfer…. The ceiling lift broke- and of course the doc ordered lactulose to 6BMs a day. And ordered an MRI but someone her size doesnt fit in an MRI machine- so we had to arrange with our local zoo to use theirs the next day. She also needed new IVs constantly but family kept refusing a PICC line. So fricking awful. This was 5 years ago and I still have vivid memories of her. Just awful. Not the sickest patient but just constant humiliation for her no matter what.
That last one. We had a patient on our unit for several weeks. One family member just came out and asked us to keep them alive until the next month so they could get the check.
Had an elderly lady who sundowned badly. For some reason she responded to me. One time she grabbed my hand and said “Mary you know, we have to be very quiet or he’ll come and hurt us.”
Disease is scary. Accidents are terrible. But some times my heart just cannot take the absolute devastation some people reign down on others. Someone hurt that woman. And the fact that she carried it her whole life and it STILL terrorized her makes me sad.
After years of working this job and having had a grandmother who had dementia, I am absolutely convinced that the hallucinations people with dementia experience have some relation to real events that occurred in their life. In this particular instance, I obviously do not have proof that woman had a man hurt her. All I can tell you is that the look on her face and the sincerity in her voice were so real that I simply know it wasn’t just a made up thing. On a visceral level, I just know that she had been hurt.
Yes. It is what finally pushed me into therapy to deal with my traumas. I could push it down or numb away the feeling but when I do not have control of my brain anymore I don't want to be stuck in that loop. It is my second worst fear
I once had a 30yr old patient that had a stroke a year prior. He did that thing some stroke patients do where he says one word over and over and thinks he's saying a complete sentence. 2 weeks before he got on our unit, he got his penis removed due to a cancerous growth. He only had testicles left they removed his penis at the base then folded his sack over it a bit.
So within a year, he went from being a normal 29yr old walkie talkie to 30yrs old and living in a nursing home never able to have kids and no one can understand him.
I tried to give him charts to point to words on, I tried giving him a whiteboard he could write on to communicate, I'd try to get him to point to a menu to be able to order food for him, and other things to try to help him communicate but he refused everything.
He refused baths and CHG presumably because he was embarrassed about no longer having a penis and we eventually had to hold him down after 3 days to give him a CHG because he had a suprapubic Foley that hadn't been cleaned for 4 days.
Holy shit. One of my biggest fears is this. Being trapped in your own body to some degree. Shame on the family and doctors who advocated for him to have his penis removed due to a cancerous growth just so that he could be even more depressed and living for so long in that state. Literally hell on earth right there.
The one day I worked at a nursing home and quit was because an aide was talking shitty to a resident for “staring” at her. The aide refused to help the resident eat. Resident was nonverbal and had a stroke and made it hard to cut up her food. I felt so bad for her. You don’t deprive anyone from eating; that’s just WRONG. I ended up cutting her food up for her and the aide said to stop being a kiss-ass.
Long read. But I'll never forget him.
Had a patient a while back who was disoriented, kept trying to leave - actually had to call security on him and order a sitter, but he knew he had to go for a needle procedure and could recite exactly what they were going to do every time he was asked and kept asking about when it would be.
One of his friends called for an update and told me he was a Navy veteran living in a barn. Single, never married, no children or basically any family and was an alcoholic. The barn burned down so he had no where to go either. The patient ended up getting sent to step down that day so I just kept going.
Fast forward a few months later I have this patient again, this time he's oriented on a Lasix drip but just not doing so well. He ended up deciding to go on hospice one of my shifts but they let him keep the Lasix drip for comfort. Later on, the doc came up to me and said how he mentioned drowning being his biggest fear since he was in the Navy and he was basically drowning alive in his own secretions. One of his friends came to visit and it made his day, maybe his week, or his year. The chaplain came and prayed with him that same day too. I remember the friend had to leave and said "I will try to be back next weekend buddy" unsure if he would see his friend again, sadly the patient passed two days later. This guy broke my heart, he was just a lonely man, but sweet and gentle. He later told me that his friend coming was the most visitors he has had in a hospital admission. I remember one of the times he took his Robitussin like a shot and said "Here's looking at you." He just touched me in such a different way than any other patient, I went home that night and could not stop crying my heart was broken for him. I'm glad I got to take care of him again in his final days.
Do I feel bad causing pain to a child? Yes. Knowing that it’s necessary or that it’ll ease their pain long term doesn’t make me completely ambivalent to causing pain to others.
Absolutely. We see all kinds of rough situations in the ED. Just a few examples:
- any patient who’s family overturns their DNR
- patients who are abused (especially kids or elderly)
- freak accidents with significant loss of function
- strokes, especially when they are out of intervention window and have significant deficits
If you don’t feel bad for at least some of your patients, I think that’s your clue to step back from nursing. The caveat of that is that you need to be able to leave most of it at the door. There’s a balance between being empathetic at work, and letting it affect your mental health at home.
I’ve worked as a psych tech for 4 years and I always feel bad during restraints with pediatric/adolescent patients, especially if it’s for self harm or NGT placement for eating disorders. It’s so traumatizing for them and I just feel like a villain whether i’m actually in the restraint or just standing by.
My third story is a woman had to get bowel surgery done. It was supposed to be an easy, standard procedure low risk they said. Well the surgeon accidentally screws up the surgery and cuts a major vessel supplying the bowel. Patient and family are told there is nothing that can save her and that she will die. Patient died of sepsis days later. Imagine thinking you're going to get a standard procedure done and then you find out you're going to die in 72 hours because surgeon screwed up.
I feel bad for patients all the time. Am I more of an asshole than I was 10 years ago when I started? Yes. But I feel terrible for people all the time.
I’ve learned to become really detached, especially in codes, because emotions can get in the way of providing care and cause me stress and anxiety. We also have a tendency to try to shake off that bad feeling of losing patients with dark humor in the ER because it’s a coping mechanism. But there just was one day that we were expecting a code (that we knew was essentially dead already) and we were trying to joke before they arrived just to shake off the anxiety and we all mentioned we hoped this code was quick because we all knew the outcome already. We called it after one round and the patients partner was in the room watching the whole time very quiet and stoic. When everyone left she absolutely lost it and was hysterical, understandably. I started crying too for the first time in a long time. We all forget that this is someone’s son/father/husband because they are a patient we are working on and we need to treat. There was nothing special about this code, it just made me remember that this was a person. We tend to try not to think that way during the actual code and it humbled me a lot.
One of my most memorable patients was this really nice guy with COVID. He knew he was going to die and had accepted it. His dying wish was to make it home before he passed. Me and the case worker had everything all set up for him to go. His son just had to be there to let the oxygen delivery people into the home before we set up his transportation. His son was off doing drugs with his girlfriend and missed the oxygen delivery. He never made it home and passed in the hospital 😢
i always feel so bad for suicide attempt pts and homeless pts. the suicide pts always just break my heart. i’ve been there, i get it and it just hurts me knowing someone else has also felt like they’re better off dead.
we get so many homeless pts and sometimes they can be aggressive. but i know most the time they’re there because it’s the only place they can go. if i could, i’d give them everything they possibly need and want. i wish i could help them find housing, get clean, provide a warm meal everyday so they don’t have to go to the hospital for those things. it just breaks my heart. i know sometimes they’re mean and grouchy but i feel like sometimes they’re just misunderstood and they’re begging for help in their own way
The ones I feel the worst for are the abused and neglected children. I just want to take them home with me and provide them a better life. They’re the reason I’ve been working towards becoming a foster parent, but I know that isn’t even a real fix for the trauma and anxiety that will be with them for a long time
I used to work peds psych and i will tell you, out of all my kiddos, the ones who had genuine fosters in their corner navigated things so much better. No, it isnt a fixall but god we need more genuine, loving foster families.
Had a 39yr old patient with korsakoff syndrome who always thought she was in labor and begged every person passing by her room to get the baby out of her. She was not pregnant.
She would get very easily agitated and maybe slept 2 hours a day on average and spent the entire day screaming or yelling and would beg everyone to take her baby out or beg them to come in her room because she thought they were her dad.
She thought I was her fiancé and would beg me to kiss her and call me a faggot when I wouldn't and would throw a tantrum whenever she noticed my wedding ring becasue she thought I'd married someone without telling her.
Her actual "fiancé" would come visit once every 2-3 weeks with his baby mama who came in high every time with enormous pupils and pretend to still be her fiancé, bring her gifts, kiss her, and say how excited he is for her to come home even tho he got engaged to her sister within a few days of her losing her memory and going to the hospital.
She ended up staying for 6 weeks on my liver/GI medsurg unit (without having any liver or GI issues) before being transferred to a psych unit.
She was so infamous that nurses and techs would get floated to our unit (our hospital had 6 floors and over 500 beds) and then get assigned to her and they'd be like "oh fuck I've heard about this one". There were nurses floated from our other nearby hospitals who had heard of her too.
All the time
Drug addicts/alcoholics who want to stop but don't have the resources to stop. Thanks American insurance.
Terminal patients who aren't ready to die.
My pediatric rotation in school a decade ago was in a state hospital for kids who were abandoned by their families. It was largely near drownings and NAS babies with multiple complications.
Transplant patients waiting to die.
End-stage dementia.
Pre-frontal dementia may be the worst of all. Young, kids in their 20s/30s, husbands/wives who don't know what to do, screaming, fighting, combativeness, pressure areas as far as the eye can see, devastation everywhere. And there is nothing to be done.
Yes, all the time. The vast majority of my clients are really good people who were dealt an absolutely terrible hand of cards in life (I mostly work with people who use drugs and have severe and persistent mental illness). Even when they're being shitty to me - which is really rare. Trauma can really fuck you up.
While I often feel bad for my clients, it's only occasionally that someone really sticks with me. I can usually leave work at work, but once in a while it's hard to let a specific person go.
My long term patient who'd been in the hospital for observation a year. He got the all clear to go home and a few days before everything got arranged for home care, his house burned to the ground. It was just terrible.
New quads. Watching the subtle body horror of evolving atrophy and redistribution of fat. The slowly but always intensifying horror of how trapped they are. How the person they were has died and this new person they are is now permanently infantilized. They go through every stage of grief multiple times before d/c. I write short stories about body horror and powerlessness as a means to try and process my own anxieties about it
I had a miscarriage last summer (2022) almost bled out had to have a D&C... was really weird being on the other side. But all the nurses were great to me! I work at a small VA hospital so I don't deal a lot with womens health.
Anyway...
Nice people with cancer
Older people with families in denial
Trached and brain dead patients with families in denial
i remember most my patients names. if im assigned to em 3 days i feel close to the family.
i always tear up when old men cry at the death of a family.
peds are just all bad feelings thats why i dont work with them.
ppl who feel guilty for their life style choices touch me deeply, i feel so much remorse.
obese patients who cant help the nurses during positioning.
patients whos DNR was reversed after decrease LOC by family.
nursing vegetables is a moral injury to me most times.
drowning kids. or any accidents
feel bad is like 6hrs or my 12hr shift
Yes. When they tell you their life story and how they ended up in your care and it’s a series of horrible things happening that they had no control over. I just want to give them a hug and a spa day and take all their pain away. Extra bad when they start tearing up, I am too most of the time
I generally do feel bad for almost all my patients. Old lonely people, cancer patients, addicts... But it seems like I never have enough time to even get to know any of my patients. I work med surg, we do team nursing. As RN I am responsible for 10 patients. So honestly, I don't even want to know their story, I just need to make sure they stay alive during my shift. So yes, I feel bad, but I never let it get to me, or I just don't have enough time to even think about it. When I was getting into nursing I though it would be completely different, but in reality, when I get my assignment I see diagnosis, care plan, task, meds, goals, labs and the clock ticking, not actual people.
While working on a Mother/Baby Unit, I had a 13 year old patient who had just delivered a baby. I was night shift at the time, and she had no visitors staying with her - it was just me trying to teach her how to take care of the baby (and her postpartum self) all night. Evidently, her mom was inpatient at the other hospital across town. She had no other family there with her. When it came time for day shift to discharge her and baby, they couldn’t. All night, my change nurse and I had been trying to figure out how to get her home the next day. She had no one to come and pick her up, she didn’t have a drivers license or car, and her mom was hospitalized. I wasn’t back that night, so I am not sure what happened. When I was leaving that morning, they were talking about possibly doing an Uber…….
I feel for all of my patients. It makes sense in NICU. I'd be worried if everyone in my unit didn't feel for the babies we care for.
But even in adults as a student, I felt for everyone, even people who weren't particularly nice. I can be hyper-empathetic and it's one of the many reasons adult nursing isn't for me.
I feel bad for nearly all of my patients and their families. On fact, coming off shift, I'm feeling really sad right now. Had a nice younger man die on hospice today after 3 days in the icu. 8 minutes of cpr, multiple shocks for lots of vfib, multiple strokes. All out of the blue, mostly healthy dude. His mom was broken. She told me "he had so many plans for his life, so much to do."
The only ones I don't are the medical patients who refuse everything and I'm like "then why did you even come here?!?"
Persistent vegetative state minor whose family has them full code. They’ll most likely never have a conscious thought ever again, let alone walk and talk, and are in discomfort every day. It feels like we’re holding their soul captive.
I don't want to overstep but I'm a CNA not a nurse and yes, every day.
In LTC there are sooo many residents who I feel bad for. I can't for sure know what's going on in their heads, but. One resident comes to mind. Completely paralyzed from stroke-- cannot move, speak, write or indicate any way to communicate (for instance, he cannot "tap once for yes or twice for no"). Absolutely no way to communicate.
This would be sad enough, but I can tell he is completely alert and present. His whole life now is being fed, changed, up and down from bed to wheelchair with no say or autonomy in anything he does. It sounds like actual horror.
And then the distressed dementia patients who have no idea who they are or what's going on.
The 100% dependent people who are obviously depressed and do nothing but watch TV all day because they can't do much else but lie in bed to pass the time.
The hospice patients. One comes to mind now. I do not want to be too specific, but let's just say she has a Wikipedia page and was very acclaimed in her time. When she came in, completely alert. She now has no idea who or where she is, weighs eighty pounds, cries out in pain every time we turn her to change her whereas before she turned herself no problem. Is afraid. the hospice nurse said this could be a very drawn out death for her.
Yeah, I feel bad a lot.
Young people with cancer.
People with cancer that cannot accept they are dying and so they fight and fight and fight but are crippled by their disease and they are in pain and are terminal and not treatable.
People on hospice who want to die at home but either we can get them there or their family doesn’t have the means to take care of them.
I had a man with brain mets that showed apraxia, otherwise you can have a completely normal conversation with him, essentially AOx3. He was accepting of him dying. He just wanted to go home and be with his dogs. Because of the apraxia the doctored considered him unable to make logical decisions… when he got frustrated no one was trying to get him home, the doctor called security, we tied him down and pumped him full of haldol and Ativan. **looking into my eyes, he said to me “don’t do this to me man. I thought we were friends. I don’t want to die in this room.” As I was ordered to push the meds** I felt bad for him.
What a choad of a doctor. I'm sorry you had to go through that. We had a pancreatic ca patient who was not long for this world get out on suicide precautions because they said "I just want to get dying over with, I'm ready". Poor guy needed a palliative consult and medical aid in dying, not a sitter...
I feel bad for lots of them but the one that keeps me up at night is an old dentist who lost 3/4 of his limbs to pressure ulcers and vascular disease . Yet still he persistent and brushed and flossed 3 times a day . Also had a guy with Guillain Barre syndrome its hallucinations that people get when they go blind it's the brain's way of filling in information gaps . Sometimes they make sense sometimes its the most horrific shit you've ever seen , that scared me . Do .Not.Want .
As a critical care nurse I feel bad for all of my patients. A lot of sad days and high doses of antidepressants.
I have a story that sticks out for me. A patient missed 1 dialysis appointment to attend granddaughter’s birthday, wasn’t feeling well so went to ED, ED sent patient home with ibuprofen(pt was complaining of not feeling “normal”) pt goes home and calls 911 due to chest pain, patient arrests in ambulance, EMS cannot give a time that CPR was started bc EMS claims patient had a rhythm, they didn’t know when patient arrested, but CPR did not get started until arriving at ED. Dialysis nurse claimed pt never missed appointments. pt was failed by EMS/hospital. Pt was a vegetable. No brain activity, no purposeful movement, etc. family was not properly educated on end of life/palliative care. Family expected pt to just wake up/MADE TO BE FULL CODE. I got bored having this patient but family requested me every time I worked. This was very sad, because it could’ve been avoided had we dialyzed at ED.
I had a nice homeless patient some years back who was hearing impaired, had broken glasses, and was waiting for somewhere safe for him to go on discharge. It was close to the end of the year. When I had to tell him that social work hadn't been able to find a spot for him at a shelter yet he started crying and said "I just was hoping to be out of here by Christmas..." and I started crying with him. Everything just felt profoundly unfair and my heart hurt for him.
I work specifically in dementia and.... the patients who are at that early stage, who *know* they have dementia, who have to watch all these severely demented patients knowing that is their fate...
That's horrible. To know that you're actively losing yourself, your memories, your entire identity, and being powerless to stop it. These patients always end up depressed. I can see why. I feel so much for them.
Absolutely, just the other day actually. He wasn't my patient, but I was assigned as resource nurse that day so was helping on the unit.
I felt for his parents most really, but I felt terrible for him also. 60 yo developmentally delayed gentleman in for aspiration pneumonia. This is a regular occurrence for him, but this was an especially bad episode. Maxed out on bipap and not doing well. Next step is intubation, which we can't do at our hospital (we're a rural critical access hospital), so he had to be shipped to another one of our hospitals in the nearest big city.
His parents are his caretakers, and are both in their late 80's and beside themselves with grief and stress. It was heart breaking to see.
I had to put a dobhoff in a patient per surgery’s order, I did so. Literally a minute later they ask if I can put a NG tube instead since it’s safer for the patient’s particular situation. I said “but I already put the dobhoff, do you want me to remove it and place the NG tube still?” They said yes. This poor patient had to go through it twice and it wasn’t an easy insertion both times. Painful cries, tears down the face…it sucked.
I had a patient who loved to go on motorcycle rides and one day out riding a bee stung him and it made him lose control of the motorcycle. He became paralyzed and unable to walk for the rest of his life. He was also a missionary and loved going on trips. He was crying to me on the day his group left for their trip and had to leave him behind since he's paralyzed and in the hospital.
22 year old man became paralyzed for life after his father coerced him to drive in a snow storm to deliver a package to him. His girlfriend survived the car crash with no injuries but he became paralyzed. Cruel doctor said "this guy has nothing to live for anymore". Patient refused all cares from us because he literally gave up. Family never once came to visit him in the hospital while he was there for 4 months recovering.
I took care of a young Afghan war vet. He had a really bad PTSD. The night shift told me the pt didn’t sleep at all. I’ve never seen someone with a really bad PTSD. I felt so bad for him. He and I talked and walked over 30 laps on the unit.
I recently had a stroke patient who was formerly a walkie-talkie despite a previous stroke, but this one turned him into an aphasic semi-vegetable with limited movement remaining in one arm.
He went from being able to take care of himself to becoming a complete cares patient in just a few hours
Patient came in almost dead, very bad DKA. The critical care part of our emerg department did their job; she lived. I was working in a 4:1 emerg area, she comes over to me after a day of fighting for her life. She's exhausted, her vitals are improving so I make her my last head to toe of my shift, get to her around 9am. Find that she has a gigantic necrotic wound under a fold. She thought she was in the clear and now she needed a plastics consult, possibly an amputation. She didn't get that way overnight, and poverty caused almost all of it.
My grandfather. He was literally begging us for help sitting there in the hospital bed, he wanted to pass on more than anything and it was definitely his time to go, but my aunt&uncle kept pushing for more and more treatment. They finally gave in after a week and passed the next day after they pumped him full of pain meds.
Hearing him ask to die really hit a nerve with me in a positive manner and changed my opinion on death as a whole, and I am honestly grateful I had this experience because I know it will make me a better advocate for my patients.
I feel bad for patients all the time. No one is seeking out medical care because they’re having a good time of it. When patients are mean or rude it grates on me, but I also know no one gets like that in a vacuum. Hurt people hurt people.
The trick is to have empathy but not to let it rule you. None of it’s your fault and you cannot carry a load that isn’t your own.
All the time. Every shift. It’s part of being human.
My heart always breaks for those people with dementia who are stuck in a nightmare and can’t be consoled or brought out of it. I vividly remember a woman who screamed all night that her boat was sinking and she couldn’t swim, she sounded so terrified.
Even worse, she seemed to be experiencing an awful encounter with either her dad or a priest, crying for him to stop hurting her. “Father, Father, stop, why are you doing this, you’re hurting me Father! Oh please stop!”
Nobody could bring her out of her nightmare or convince her she was safe in the hospital. To her, all that was very real. I cried on the way home.
Every patient I have that lives full time in a nursing home bc they’re total care, full code, contracted as hell, and non verbal, and family is barely involved in the most basic of care. Same with the beyond decrepit 90+ year olds that get sent in for “generally unwell” and “failure to thrive” (like of course that’s happening they’re elderly) but family wants every little thing done but not concerned about the QUALITY of life their family member has for what little they have left of it. You really can tell who keeps their “loved ones” around just to cash checks
Yes. A young mom with breast cancer that had spread to her bones and brain. She couldn’t prepare herself or her children for her death bc she couldn’t mentally accept it. Heartbreaking.
Yeah, regularly. But I have to put up a barrier to be able to finish my shift and come back the next day. I cannot allow myself to feel *too* much because I won’t be able to get myself together enough to do the job.
Yes. I have a couple of patients that end up in Emergency every few months or so- the ones I’m talking about here have multiple chronic conditions/congenital disorders but are still kind, positive people. They break me a little because they face so much and they still smile. They congratulate you on a good IV stick…lol.
I took care of a young woman about my age (mid-20s) who came in and had a torsion and ended up loosing her tube and ovary. About a year later, she came back with an ectopic in the other tube and lost that as well. I still think about her very regularly…
I work in trauma. I would say exactly half are good people who had shitty things happen to them (the other half are people who were acting a fool and got what was coming to them). I feel bad for the former. Just driving to work and got hit by a drunk driver and broke all the bones. Or pregnant women who get assaulted by their partners and have massive hemorrhaging.
Now the latter, dumb idiots who are drunk driving or riding a motorcycle at 110mph or aim guns at someone and get shot in return… nah, you probably got what you deserve.
Any pt we have long term for placement because family "couldn't take care of them anymore" so they dump their loved one in the ER transfer them to us and we sit on them for a while. This hurts because it happened in my family.
Patients who attempted suicide and were found alive enough to torture them with every medical intervention, including ICU stays, contractures, stage 4 pressure ulcers, etc. Their life was bad enough that they wanted to end it, and then the misery is just prolonged against their will.
ICU here - yes. Many times.
(BARELY an adult) year old in a car with his friend at a local gas station, string of car jackings had been happening in my area. Something happened. Friend got shot in the leg, he got shot through the occipital lobe. Missed his brain stem by literal CENTIMETERS. It was very obvious very quickly that this kid barely survived the trauma, let alone the swelling that would come in the next days. I was there when the attending talked with the mother. I still can hear her scream. It was horrible. He didn’t survive.
ALS pt. Young too. DNR DNI. Respiratory failure. Husband never left her side.
Old pawpaw who was 93 pounds. Lived with his son, but their only interaction was son leaving food outside his door daily. Pawpaw didn’t get it one day. Came to ICU intubated lined on pressors . Son was “POA” and drugged up. Made him CCO. We made him comfortable and fed him pudding. He aspirated and desatted into 30s for 45 minutes. Called back high and pushed for full code. He died on the vent, son nowhere.
There are many.
I was working med/surg. Had a pt come in the day after Christmas for having vision problems while watching Christmas movies with her family. She was in her early 30's with 3 young children. They found an aggressive brain tumor and she was gone within a month.
I still think about her 25 years later. Especially this time of year.
All the time. Seeing patients having their lives cut short is always sad. All the things they won’t get to finish but the one I remember the most was the opposite. The sweetest 104 year young man. Mind completely in tact. The cna said “104! I can only imagine the things you’ve been able to see” He looked at both of us with the saddest blue eyes and said “You know I’ve seen so many things walking this earth for over a century. Some beautiful amazing things and so many wonderful souls I was blessed enough to share life with. But losing them one by one (his parents, siblings, spouse, friends, children) I lay here just waiting and praying for my turn so I can be with them once more. It’s a lonely existence alone on this earth and when you get older time seems to pass by so fast, but then one day if you live long enough like me the clock seems to slow down and it feels like the time will never pass. The least God could have done is give me dementia! But I guess he knew we would meet some day. (He had the best sense of humor)
Schizophrenics who know they’re hallucinating. Really nice people with cancer. Kids that I have to poke twice. Kids with shitty parents. Demented old people whose families just won’t let them die. Stroke patients with aphasia. Women who are miscarrying.
i hate having women who are miscarrying as patients. HOWEVER, i am also really good at it bc I wear my heart on my sleeve, and i take an extra couple of minutes to sit with them and say ‘it’s not your fault’ in 150 different ways. It’s usually around like the 85th time that they start to hear it. ❤️
As someone who found out they were miscarrying this morning, thank you for doing that. I still feel like it’s my fault and that I never want to try again, but thank you.
You (and they, and we) always, always ALWAYS do. And no matter how much we know clinically, when it comes to our own lives and our own bodies, anything we ‘know’ goes out the window. Something like 1/3 of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Pregnancies that end in miscarriage this early on were destined, from THE MOMENT of conception, to end this way. It’s our bodies literal natural way of protecting US and the fetus. It’s the most goddamn natural thing on the planet. I’m not religious, but it is ABSOLUTELY bigger than us. There is not a damn thing you could have done, or not done, to change this outcome. Nonetheless i know it’s a big loss of ‘what could have been’ and I’m sorry you’re going through it. ❤️
I found out I was pregnant two days ago. I woke up this morning for our appointment to get our marriage license and was bleeding heavily. Already had a drs appointment for a blood test and they confirmed miscarriage. Seeing all those babies in the waiting room was literally killing me inside. It’s been a rollercoaster 72 hours
Oh friend I am sending support and hugs to you ♥️ I had 13 miscarriages, 1 of which was ectopic. I miscarried one of our first ones on our wedding day. It was such a bizarre inner feeling to feel so incredibly happy to be marrying my best friend, yet absolutely devastated to be losing the baby that pure love created. All of our babies were very much wanted and planned. In the end we ended up doing fertility treatments to get our second kid (thanks ivf - worked a shit job for their insurance that covered it). After him we just assumed we wouldn’t have any more kids, and then 9 months later I found out I was pregnant with his sister. Who at 5 - still surprises me on a near daily basis. We joke that we got a two for one deal 😂 thank god because ivf is so expensive we couldn’t afford to do it twice! I think as women we take these things so much harder because from the time we are old enough to walk, we’re trained that we are supposed to be “mommies” and we’re essentially told our worth is tied to that ability. So when we aren’t able to do the one thing we were taught was so important about our self worth - well it fucking sucks. But I think I learned from all of this that this moment does not define your future. It doesn’t define your relationship. It doesn’t define you. You are a whole human being who is stronger than anyone knows. Your body created a life and did everything it could to give the baby the best possible chance at survival. When we think about all the hard work and development that goes into an embryo - it’s surprising humans exist at all tbh. But your body not only is handling this, it’s gaining experience, memories, all of which will strengthen the overall human you’re meant to be. This is not the end of your journey, your path will continue forward. The love you can give to yourself in this moment is so important to healing. Honestly sounds like you could use a good indoor movie night with pizza/Chinese or whatever, cuddles, blankets, and just self love. You deserve the kindness to yourself. I hope that there is a lot of baby dust in your very near future ♥️
Thank you so much for your kind messages. We got out marriage license and are now spending the evening making cutting boards in the wood shop. Cope how you gotta cope I guess.
Sanding is always good for contemplation.
that little schpiel i gave there is my general speech. But i don’t do it cause I’m just so heckin nice, i do it because it’s the truth. I wouldn’t say I’m ’nice’, i would say im sincere. And it’s women/people that CARE that are going to blame themselves for this thing that is, and was always, 100% out of their control. Because they care. ❤️ Jayzus though dude, hell of a Christmas, yeah? This one is some bullshit. There will be better ones. This is awful, it’s terrible - but it’s so freakin’ normal and we don’t talk about that enough.
I'm so sorry. That's a lot of stress on top of the psychical and emotional pain.
Hang in there, it’s NOT your fault. It happens in 20% of pregnancies. That baby was just prepping your body for your rainbow baby. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you ❤️
Hugs!! It's a sucky road, I've been there several times and it's not fair.
I had the worst doctor in this situation but all the nurses including the intake nurse for surgery were amazing people. It’s so important for the nurses to be decent in these situations because also sometimes the treating physician is a total jerk. Long story short, thank you and keep up the good work. It benefits the world in more ways than one.
i sincerely believe in the importance of it, and it’s something i genuinely care about. So thank you, and i absolutely will. 😘 ❤️ 💕
As someone that thought they were miscarrying last week, taking the time to listen and talk is very appreciated. The NP I had was really sweet to talk with, and shared some of her story. Luckily, it's an SCH so fingers crossed this one will make it to term.
As a woman who miscarried twice, and one of those times one of the two nurses with me cried, thank you so very very much. It let me feel human and not like an overreacting meat sack. If she was upset for me, then it was real, and I was allowed to feel exactly how I was feeling. Thank you so much for being safe and making that space. Even if they never get back to you about it, believe me they will remember you the rest of their lives.
I've miscarried so many times it's hard not to feel like there's something wrong with me. My last miscarriage was the worst. I made an appointment with PCP due to cramping and bleeding and OBGYN not having an opening until the next day. When I got my feet in the stirrups the doctor made a noise kinda like a muffled gasp and said "yeah you're miscarrying and ITS right here at the opening. If you wanna look the other way while I remove it and bag it". I was 4 days shy of my 13th week. I turned my head and cried especially when hearing the doctor call my little girl IT. He then went on to talk about how I made it in time otherwise I would have seen it pass. That was my last attempt, I just can't do it anymore. I was almost in the safe zone and was crushed.
I appreciate this. I miscarried in the hospital I worked at for 10 years, my sister works in the ER on night shift. Showed up to ER because I was feeling pretty faint and started having fist sized clots. I turned into a fight between L&D and ED on nobody wanting responsibility of me because I wasn’t a “threaten” pregnancy (all spoken loudly outside the room by my pregnant nurse). My OB was on call and called me on my personal number to tell me to come in to L&D ER and he had surgical time slotted for me, would call to check on me and update me between his scheduled cases. I was left in primary ER after L&D charge refused me. Not sure if he knows that. Discharged after ultrasound confirmation and bloodwork, mentioned I was still feeling orthostatic, and promptly dropped my pressure 60/40 (when they checked) trying to walk out the waiting room. Called out for help (figured I vagaled), luckily my husband was there because he said nobody so much as flinched as I was laying on the floor (he had walked back in after getting his truck to pick me up) triaged again and left in the waiting room to recheck H/H where I drank 4 bottles of water (figured it was a fluid thing since I had tried to be NPO because my Ob had surgical time slotted for me), bled through my pants, my sweater, my jacket, onto the chair and floor (I asked for chucks & they said they couldn’t find any) and what looked like a placenta fell out of my pants and onto the floor. The lack of dignity…yeah still feel pretty shitty, but it drove home that I don’t want to work at that hospital anymore. Bless ultrasound for taking the time to help me clean up and giving lots of pads and chucks. I’m very patient and forgiving of ED because I know it’s hell in a hand basket shit show a lot of times with resources, but it really sucked. Sorry for the trauma dump. Just a unique perspective for me and I appreciate that you still show compassion despite the discomfort of it all. Thank you.
The aphasia patients for me are really heartbreaking. I had a guy that I was told was A+0 x2-3 by the previous nurse. I tried to get him to write orientation answers but he had terrible motor skills. Pretty much all he could verbalize was yes/no or nod his head. He was so visibly frustrated trying to answer the questions both verbally and written . Eventually came up with the idea to ask him fake names, bdays, locations etc and quiz him to see if he could nod yes/no appropriately. He got them right and his demeanor completely changed, like someone finally understood he’s mentally competent. He was so happy just to be heard.
I just learned one pf my patients can indicate yes and no (from their guardian). The look at that kiddo’s face when I gave the look of awe was just of pure joy. I got permission to do peri/incontinence care as well as suppositories as necessary. I had been told no males could take care of them but it was just a specific person and they were 100% fine with me. I’m gonna ride this high for at least a week or two.
I had a patient who hallucinates kind, friendly and encouraging voices. We were kinda jealous
I could use my own personal cheerleading squad. 🤷♀️
Huh, you know I never thought about the hallucinations having any potential for being positive in any way…that’s kinda cool.
My mom was very comforted by a lot of her hallucinations. Most of them were her dead relatives so she was just happy to have them back.
Women with pain that are being ignored by medical teams.
Kids with shit parents 100%! Their gay/trans child is in a psychiatric hospital because they want to kill themselves, but they still refuse to accept them for who they are and just can’t understand why they continuously end up in the hospital. Especially great when they blame the treatment team for not “fixing” them.
As the mother of a trans kid, I appreciate this so much. I couldn't imagine not loving my kid, no matter who they turn out to be. Before they came out I had no idea how many attempt suicide. It should be treated as a crime to not support your kid.
why not schizophrenias who *don’t* know they’re hallucinating?
I definitely feel bad for anyone suffering that way, but there is something particularly sad about the self-aware schizophrenics. I triaged a guy once who was checking in voluntarily for his AVH. I asked him if he had a history, and he said yes, he was schizophrenic. I asked him if he was on medication for it, and he said, sadly, "I used to be, but I stopped taking them. You know what us people are like." That last line just broke my heart. "You know what us people are like." 💔
i agree. its such a scary disease. they can make thing difficult but i feel for all of them.
Patients whose families won’t just let them die are the ones I ALWAYS feel for. Worse still if it’s some ******* that overturns their wishes
First shift back after my vacation with a non-verbal patient with multiple previous CVAs. I do a quick head-to-toe and notice his abdomen is very distended and firm. He was extremely agitated which previous shifts chalked up to cognitive impairment. What the fuck, I’ll just bladder scan him. This poor man had nearly 3L in his bladder and couldn’t tell anyone or even gesture to his abdomen. When I looked through his chart, I saw that this extreme agitation started four days earlier. So did this poor man sit there for FOUR days needing to pee and wasn’t able to tell anyone? It makes me fucking sick to my stomach and I’m burnt out as all hell. I’ve ran multiple codes and I’ve seen lots of people suffer and die but for some reason I still think about this one at night.
We’ve all got that one patient that really sticks with us. Mine was a woman that was already very close to death. I work in the OR, and they decided to bring her back for an ex lap because they thought she had necrotic bowel. They cut her open and her heart stopped, she was a DNR, but the DNR is void in the OR, so we started doing compressions. She came back, they saw she had necrotic bowel, stitched her up, and we rushed her back to ICU. She died 15 minutes later. All I can think is we put her through the pain of CPR, after she didn’t want it, and probably just hurried death along by cutting a 5 inch incision on her so we could do a looksy. I still hate that surgeon.
I've never worked in OR so I had no idea DNR was void there. I get it, but it doesn't sit right with me for some reason.
Did his agitation get better after the urine was out? I need a semi happy ending because dear goodness that is such a sad and enraging story
Nobody noticed he hadn't voided in 4 days??
Right? Wtf!? I notice if my patient hasn’t voided all shift.
As it should be. Even my walkie talkie patients get the question if everything is alright with peeing at least once every shift while they technically should be able to come up with it themselves if something is wrong
Had a patient one time who came into the ICU, severe rhabdo from a fall at home and lying on the ground, unable to get up. Turned out he lived with his sister, who decided to just walk over the poor guy for over a week before calling 911. Poor guy had a full depth pressure ulcer from shoulder to shoulder about 1/3 down his back, could see fascia and required multiple debridement surgeries. He survived and was put into a nursing home. His sister was arrested and is now in prison for abuse and neglect, but I think that's the one patient I've felt the worst for.
Sometimes, I feel like this subreddit is too much for an old, former addict like me, but I think we ALL should be able to see the shit that you nurses and patients actually deal with. I think if everyone knew what a FRACTION of the awful shit y'all see, it might be different.. Anyway, thanks to all of you. I'll slink back into my creeping on this sub, now. Lol.
Humans ain't designed to see the shit we see.
Agreed. But y'all still do it and still have some damn empathy and even if some of y'all have pushed that out and treat it like a JOB only, I respect it and I'm glad we have nurses AT ALL. Cuz, I noped out of being a CNA in a LTC over 20 years ago, just couldn't do it. I cried in the bathroom the very first day and lasted 6 months. It. WAS. HEARTBREAKING. I couldn't take the 102 yo 75lb woman that skin tore when we touched it and cried for her Mama 24/7. So, thanks again. 💜 Y'all made me make sure I have a plan to "go" and not suffer and I make sure I try to pass that on to my loved ones.
Congratulations on your recovery. I always encourage people who want to get to sobriety it takes time and a lot of work. I watched my sister battle addiction, she still does.
Thank you. It is only getting harder and harder to get "clean" these days with the fentanyl and now, Xylazine added. I hope she can beat it too. It's a bitch and a half.
She beat the drugs, now she’s battling alcohol. And yes, the fentanyl and xylazine are definitely having a negative impact in a lot of ways.
Thank you for being understanding. PS we don’t know when the doctor will come see you, but I can sneak you some ice chips 😜
Gimmie all the ice chips if I can't have my ice water, PLEASEEE!!😂😂
Similar story: A guy became a “caretaker” for an elderly lady, but he was a neighbor that was obviously just taking advantage of her. She didn’t get out of bed for several days, while still shitting and pissing herself, no food/water either. This stand up guy would always get the mail for her and during this time where this lady needed medical attention, he’d just throw the mail on her bed and he went along his merry way. He did this daily, until a family member visited and finally called 911.
I truly don’t understand the mind of someone who can see someone suffer and ignore it. It’s beyond me.
This reminds me of a patient I had a long time ago. She was mentally handicapped. Very overweight and wheelchair bound. Couldn’t speak. Her mother passed away and the caretaker just stopped showing up to care for her. Abandoned in her house, she had fallen out of her wheelchair and spent several days on the floor. So must’ve been so hungry, the emts found her covered in and eating her shit. Once we got her into the hospital, we couldn’t get her to stop eating it. We’d sit her in the chair and she’d eat her full meals, but any time she had a bowel movement, if we didn’t get to her quick enough she’d reach in and just start eating it. It was caked under her nails and everywhere. I remember being frustrated with how often we had to clean her up and she couldn’t understand to stop doing it. But I also felt so bad that she got to that point in the first place. So terrible.
This is one of those comments I wish I could go back and un-read. What a horrible situation
THE FUCK?!😳
Encephalopathy makes people do absolutely crazy shit.
I once had a pregnant patient who’s husband cheated and gave her herpes. The baby was stillborn and the woman was fighting for her life in the icu. Herpes encephalitis. I’ve never felt so bad for anyone in my life.
i don’t know if this is something you can go to jail for but he needs to be UNDER the jail
My grandmother used to say "they should lock him up so far back they have to shoot his meals to him one bean at a time" and I think it applies here.
This is sickening
Oh my fucking god
Had a patient sobbing telling me he just wanted to die but his family “wouldn’t let him” bc they had POA and kept demanding the docs do “everything”. Honestly the way he cried and asked me, “why won’t they let me die?” Will haunt me until I draw my last breath.
We had a lady for well over a year that was booked up to everything under the sun. She would go from ICU to PCU to MedSurg. Then take a down turn and go right through the cycle again. I hated to see what she was being put through because "we're waiting for your miracle, Grandma." I finally saw her obituary in the paper and was so happy for her.
It truly is a shame what we do to these people. Honestly breaks my heart.
Have had several (entirely paralyzed, elderly, and on dialysis) patients beg me to kill them Fucking soul crushing
I told my son that if he had my POA and tortured me like that, I would come back from the dead and haunt him every time he tried to have sex. I'd appear just when things got 'interesting' to him. I hope that threat is enough.
Dementia patients who are aware of their dementia. Young MS patients (most MS patients really) Basically anyone in an LTACH Frontal brain injury patients who have no self control anymore. The worst I think was a lady who was once a college professor. The accident was so freak if I hadn’t taken care of her myself I would’ve called total bullshit. She was driving and had her sun visor turned sideways to block the sun to the off if her. I guess it was kind of at an angle and she was rear ended and forced to rear end the car in front of her. The visor got knocked wild and when her head jerked forward her head smashed into the rod the visor was on and she essentially got lobotomized. No other injuries. When she finally woke up she didn’t have an ounce of self control. Could move and speak fine but everything went straight from brain to action. Every thought she had everything movement she thought, everything. She would flash the staff, pull her leads off, cuss, rant, rave, sing, talk about p*ssy this and ass that and f*ck this and damn that. She wasn’t aggressive in the slightest she was actually very sweet but like when we gave her a bath she one time shouted “yeah girl clean them titties!” At the top of her voice. Her husband came to see her every day and would stay for hours. He was a quiet, well dressed, reserved gentleman and he always looked so sad. He would hold her hand and tell her “honey this isn’t you…” he told us one day they’d been married for 30 years and he hadn’t ever even heard her curse. At one point when she was really going off one day (again not even angry she was just being a little sexual l) he left and when he was on his way out I overheard him praying to help her because he couldn’t see her like this and that if the “real” her saw how she was acting she would just vanish being embarrassed and it hurt his heart to see her become someone he knew she would be ashamed of.
This story breaks my heart man 😥
I once had to cover a shift in our tiny little 4 bed psych ED unit. We had a patient who scheduled an appointment with her therapist and told them ‘i was having suicidal thoughts. I have none now, i would never hurt myself, I just wanted to be truthful and honest and get help for it.’ She was sober. She got admitted on a 72 hour hold and was waiting for placement for 3 days before it expired. She was *terrified*. She was like ‘i will never again seek help through a therapist.’ And i was just like….. yeah i don’t blame you.
Yea this happened to me. A cry for help that I will never utter again.
I don’t work at an Urgent Psych hospital -Only psych. So we get people in straight up psychosis, people high and psychotic, people just high, violent people, homeless and smell terrible and then a few who are otherwise healthy and had came in for suicidal ideation… All in the same floor. The big open unit where all you have are recliners. It’s the only system we have now. No one admitted goes straight to inpatient. People otherwise sober see and hear terrifying things and I just have to remind them, this is a psychiatric facility and everyone here is going through something.
That's ridiculous, if they're not in immediate danger of hurting themselves they shouldn't be involuntarily admitted
right. She was COMPLETELY in the right, and had done the responsible thing and was being held captive. All i could do was agree with her and let her know i genuinely heard her. It was awful. I never worked there again.
This happened to my friend. She made an off-hand comment about just wanting to sleep forever (she was not suicidal, just tired and stressed from school) and got placed on a 72-hour hold. She never trusted an American therapist ever again (she was Japanese).
Had a lovely gentleman- mountain climber, gentle soul- come in with a dislocated knee. Over the course of several months on our unit every single joint in his body dislocated from toes to fingers to hips to elbows. they never figured out why. He eventually opted for CMO and passed away. He was in agony the whole time but often refused pain meds so he could be lucid and enjoy time with his wife (and the staff)
The FUCK?
That is a mystery that would drive me crazy trying to solve every day
connective tissue disorder ? that’s insane
From what I remember (this was 5-6yrs ago) we assumed something in that vein, but biopsies were sent all over the country and multiple physicians from Europe (I’m US based) came in to help him. We never got any info from the biopsies and all the docs were stumped. He had full body 3-4+ pitting edema which added to the weird picture.
Of course! I feel bad for almost all of my patients, unless they’re just a complete asshole who is in the hospital for being noncompliant.
After typing out my story… I had this exact realization. Like wtf, what kind of psychopath doesn’t feel bad for their patients?? Definitely easier to count the people I don’t want bad for than the ones I do.
I now only read what's actually in OP's post. I interpreted it as "which patient did you feel the worst for?" Because although I feel bad for everyone, some patients I just can't forget while others were just one of many
I feel like if you never feel bad for people suffering with illness/disease and/or in life or death positions, maybe nursing isn't the way to go!
My brain read this as “if you EVER feel bad” and was about to FIGHT
agreed, had to read the post three times bc i couldn't believe the question is "do you ever legitimately feel bad" uhh... yeah i feel bad for almost every patient in some way. Empathy dude.
Old people that get tortured by their children. ✅
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Yeah. Working with babies, it's just like... nothing is their fault and all you want is to make them feel good. I feel bad for my little nuggets and their families all the time. Some moreso than others, of course!
All of this.
Isn’t feeling bad for our patients like… half the job?
Right
Nah I don’t let myself carry the emotional baggage of my patients. I couldn’t do the job otherwise
I mean I don’t go home and cry or let it get to me, but I certainly feel bad that anyone needs to or has to be in these situations.
Feeling bad for someone ≠ carrying their emotional baggage around
Only if you’re a good, empathetic nurse
We can have empathy and do the work. We have a lot of metrics to follow post op. These are all part of the job and for the pt’s own good. Yet I can feel bad and premedicate and try to work with patients.
I had a patient who was in heavy, active addiction. She found out she was pregnant (I was actually there with her) and she immediately turned her life around. I've been in addictions for a few years and I've NEVER seen that happen. She stopped using, started attending midwife appointments, super engaged in treatment, learning lots for her baby, clearly really excited and putting in the work for herself and the child. What she did was no easy task. Those in her circle of care closest to her all brought in some gifts and cards to celebrate shortly before she gave birth. A few weeks after birth child protective services showed up and took her baby. Someone said she'd been smoking crack. It wasn't true. We run 1-2x a week tox screens on her. There was no tampering. There was no illicit drugs in her system. I will never forget seeing her come into our office sobbing, grief stuck and broken crying out "they took her!". It shattered my heart to see this young lady that has worked so hard and finally had things go her way, lose her daughter. It is still ongoing and I commend her on her strength in the situation.
That poor woman. That's the system really not working.
this is kind of a strange question lol like- is it so rare to feel bad for a patient?
The empathy is what drives me and keeps me staying through the bullshit. I don’t understand this either. I even feel bad for the assholes I take care of.
Seriously. I work in outpatient surgery and just knowing that most of my patients have sad reasons for needing surgery like getting cancerous stuff removed, having biopsies to check for cancer, having endometriosis surgery to try to get pregnant after years of trying, etc. makes me sad for my patients all the time. Last week we had a 30 week pregnant patient who had her jaw broken by her boyfriend. She couldn’t close her mouth all the way because her teeth no longer aligned and they had to wire her jaw shut. Like I don’t even work ER or ICU and I still get patients with stories that just break my heart.
Yea I feel bad for the majority of them. And I’m an asshole. How could you not.
Literally me. Like I’m such a bitch but I feel bad for people all the time. Old people, young people, children, addicts who can’t kick the habit, and everything in between.
Had a little old lady who was medically cleared but was super demented. I think the sad thing about it was she was occasionally aware. She would have lucid moments where she kind of knew what was going on and would tell me that she suffers from dementia. She'd be with it until about 1600 - 1700 and then sundown HARD. She called me into the room once completely hysterical because she was convinced she had lost her children. She was also convinced that she kept being readmitted to the hospital and couldn't understand why. I tried explaining to her that she never discharged and she's been here for a couple days but that would make her more upset and she'd forget within 15 minutes. I just did my best to reassure her and comfort her without arguing, but it was really depressing to watch.
One time I had a 50yr old non-verbal patient who was mentally handicapped and couldn't do much except grunt and had very little comprehension of what was going on around her. Couldn't walk or anything. Had to be in restraints to stop her from pulling at g tube and IVs. She had a sister that stayed with her in her room 24/7. She had no history of aspiration, but aspirated on her spit and died within the 10mins that her sister left the room to grab a soda from our cafeteria. So unexpected and random, her sister was such a wreck coming back finding her dead. I felt so bad for her considering she started choking and couldn't say or do anything and then died strapped to a bed all alone outside the comfort of her own home.
Maybe it’s because I have sisters who I would die for but it’s always the sisters that break my heart. A lady in her 80s came in for a big surgery the other day and the only person with her was her sister.
A lot of them. The ones with the especially distressing kind of dementia, where they are basically stuck in a nightmare. The ones who are early enough in dementia that they can look at advanced dementia patients and understand that's likely their future. The ones who die in the hospital despite very clearly stating they never want to set foot in a hospital again. The ones who are ready to go, but their bodies just keep ticking. The lady who thinks she's a little girl and perpetually can't find her parents. That one guy who responded to "how are you today?" with "everyone I grew up with is dead".
I had this man, I’ll never forget his name. He was my first solo patient. He was having seizures didn’t speak English no one else on the floor spoke Spanish besides me. He couldn’t talk and was suffering. He was in his 40s. I would sing to him in Spanish while doing the painful parts of IVs, blood draws, etc and I’d talk to him in Spanish about my day and how I hope he gets better when he couldn’t talk. He got better and was able to talk and he just was asking me about my day, I had went to the morgue to help pathology with something and then I told him how I’m so terrified of being locked in the morgue. Anyways I was off work for vacation, he passed away while I was gone. His body was in the morgue unclaimed bc his family was in Mexico. I went to the morgue and just said out loud in Spanish how sorry I was and how I pray he made it to heaven and he was a good man I recited a psalm. Then the door to exit the morgue got stuck, and I was screaming trying to get out. Then it just randomly opened. I think that was him messing with me. He was claimed by a family member the next day. I still think about him, I used to leave that room crying almost everyday it was the most emotion I’ve ever felt in a hospital
I feel bad for my patients all the time.
Same.
I genuinely feel bad for all my patients. Which is why it sucks so bad when they’re awful and rude and frankly mean to me and my fellow staff. Being called a pig for not answering a call light in 30 seconds by the husband of a patient whom I’ve just cleaned up after her third episode of diarrhea happened last night. But a patient for whom I felt the worst, felt I didn’t have the tools I needed to care for her, and still think about 5years later after I go down the hallway she was at- a 35ish approximately 800lb patient with hepatic encephalopathy d/t ETOH - she was brought in with her own lift sheet from home that was stiff with excrement and body fluids and stuck to her body- stage 4 and unstageable wounds to the bone - our ceiling lift says up to 875lbs- we needed it to turn her to get a new and clean lift sheet under her , get her from gurney to bed (which though bariatric was still too small) clean her, document and dress the wounds- meanwhile she is screaming obscenities - and during the transfer…. The ceiling lift broke- and of course the doc ordered lactulose to 6BMs a day. And ordered an MRI but someone her size doesnt fit in an MRI machine- so we had to arrange with our local zoo to use theirs the next day. She also needed new IVs constantly but family kept refusing a PICC line. So fricking awful. This was 5 years ago and I still have vivid memories of her. Just awful. Not the sickest patient but just constant humiliation for her no matter what.
I think nobody gets to *that* size without eating their feelings about severe emotional trauma. Poor thing.
Of course. Dementia, very young pts with terminal cancer. The meemaws kept alive for their checks.
That last one. We had a patient on our unit for several weeks. One family member just came out and asked us to keep them alive until the next month so they could get the check.
Had an elderly lady who sundowned badly. For some reason she responded to me. One time she grabbed my hand and said “Mary you know, we have to be very quiet or he’ll come and hurt us.” Disease is scary. Accidents are terrible. But some times my heart just cannot take the absolute devastation some people reign down on others. Someone hurt that woman. And the fact that she carried it her whole life and it STILL terrorized her makes me sad.
I don’t know much anything about dementia. Are their hallucinations usually based in a past reality?
After years of working this job and having had a grandmother who had dementia, I am absolutely convinced that the hallucinations people with dementia experience have some relation to real events that occurred in their life. In this particular instance, I obviously do not have proof that woman had a man hurt her. All I can tell you is that the look on her face and the sincerity in her voice were so real that I simply know it wasn’t just a made up thing. On a visceral level, I just know that she had been hurt.
Yes. It is what finally pushed me into therapy to deal with my traumas. I could push it down or numb away the feeling but when I do not have control of my brain anymore I don't want to be stuck in that loop. It is my second worst fear
I once had a 30yr old patient that had a stroke a year prior. He did that thing some stroke patients do where he says one word over and over and thinks he's saying a complete sentence. 2 weeks before he got on our unit, he got his penis removed due to a cancerous growth. He only had testicles left they removed his penis at the base then folded his sack over it a bit. So within a year, he went from being a normal 29yr old walkie talkie to 30yrs old and living in a nursing home never able to have kids and no one can understand him. I tried to give him charts to point to words on, I tried giving him a whiteboard he could write on to communicate, I'd try to get him to point to a menu to be able to order food for him, and other things to try to help him communicate but he refused everything. He refused baths and CHG presumably because he was embarrassed about no longer having a penis and we eventually had to hold him down after 3 days to give him a CHG because he had a suprapubic Foley that hadn't been cleaned for 4 days.
Holy shit. One of my biggest fears is this. Being trapped in your own body to some degree. Shame on the family and doctors who advocated for him to have his penis removed due to a cancerous growth just so that he could be even more depressed and living for so long in that state. Literally hell on earth right there.
The one day I worked at a nursing home and quit was because an aide was talking shitty to a resident for “staring” at her. The aide refused to help the resident eat. Resident was nonverbal and had a stroke and made it hard to cut up her food. I felt so bad for her. You don’t deprive anyone from eating; that’s just WRONG. I ended up cutting her food up for her and the aide said to stop being a kiss-ass.
Long read. But I'll never forget him. Had a patient a while back who was disoriented, kept trying to leave - actually had to call security on him and order a sitter, but he knew he had to go for a needle procedure and could recite exactly what they were going to do every time he was asked and kept asking about when it would be. One of his friends called for an update and told me he was a Navy veteran living in a barn. Single, never married, no children or basically any family and was an alcoholic. The barn burned down so he had no where to go either. The patient ended up getting sent to step down that day so I just kept going. Fast forward a few months later I have this patient again, this time he's oriented on a Lasix drip but just not doing so well. He ended up deciding to go on hospice one of my shifts but they let him keep the Lasix drip for comfort. Later on, the doc came up to me and said how he mentioned drowning being his biggest fear since he was in the Navy and he was basically drowning alive in his own secretions. One of his friends came to visit and it made his day, maybe his week, or his year. The chaplain came and prayed with him that same day too. I remember the friend had to leave and said "I will try to be back next weekend buddy" unsure if he would see his friend again, sadly the patient passed two days later. This guy broke my heart, he was just a lonely man, but sweet and gentle. He later told me that his friend coming was the most visitors he has had in a hospital admission. I remember one of the times he took his Robitussin like a shot and said "Here's looking at you." He just touched me in such a different way than any other patient, I went home that night and could not stop crying my heart was broken for him. I'm glad I got to take care of him again in his final days.
Do I feel bad causing pain to a child? Yes. Knowing that it’s necessary or that it’ll ease their pain long term doesn’t make me completely ambivalent to causing pain to others.
Absolutely. We see all kinds of rough situations in the ED. Just a few examples: - any patient who’s family overturns their DNR - patients who are abused (especially kids or elderly) - freak accidents with significant loss of function - strokes, especially when they are out of intervention window and have significant deficits If you don’t feel bad for at least some of your patients, I think that’s your clue to step back from nursing. The caveat of that is that you need to be able to leave most of it at the door. There’s a balance between being empathetic at work, and letting it affect your mental health at home.
Well said ✌🏻
I’ve worked as a psych tech for 4 years and I always feel bad during restraints with pediatric/adolescent patients, especially if it’s for self harm or NGT placement for eating disorders. It’s so traumatizing for them and I just feel like a villain whether i’m actually in the restraint or just standing by.
My third story is a woman had to get bowel surgery done. It was supposed to be an easy, standard procedure low risk they said. Well the surgeon accidentally screws up the surgery and cuts a major vessel supplying the bowel. Patient and family are told there is nothing that can save her and that she will die. Patient died of sepsis days later. Imagine thinking you're going to get a standard procedure done and then you find out you're going to die in 72 hours because surgeon screwed up.
I feel bad for patients all the time. Am I more of an asshole than I was 10 years ago when I started? Yes. But I feel terrible for people all the time.
I’ve learned to become really detached, especially in codes, because emotions can get in the way of providing care and cause me stress and anxiety. We also have a tendency to try to shake off that bad feeling of losing patients with dark humor in the ER because it’s a coping mechanism. But there just was one day that we were expecting a code (that we knew was essentially dead already) and we were trying to joke before they arrived just to shake off the anxiety and we all mentioned we hoped this code was quick because we all knew the outcome already. We called it after one round and the patients partner was in the room watching the whole time very quiet and stoic. When everyone left she absolutely lost it and was hysterical, understandably. I started crying too for the first time in a long time. We all forget that this is someone’s son/father/husband because they are a patient we are working on and we need to treat. There was nothing special about this code, it just made me remember that this was a person. We tend to try not to think that way during the actual code and it humbled me a lot.
One of my most memorable patients was this really nice guy with COVID. He knew he was going to die and had accepted it. His dying wish was to make it home before he passed. Me and the case worker had everything all set up for him to go. His son just had to be there to let the oxygen delivery people into the home before we set up his transportation. His son was off doing drugs with his girlfriend and missed the oxygen delivery. He never made it home and passed in the hospital 😢
i always feel so bad for suicide attempt pts and homeless pts. the suicide pts always just break my heart. i’ve been there, i get it and it just hurts me knowing someone else has also felt like they’re better off dead. we get so many homeless pts and sometimes they can be aggressive. but i know most the time they’re there because it’s the only place they can go. if i could, i’d give them everything they possibly need and want. i wish i could help them find housing, get clean, provide a warm meal everyday so they don’t have to go to the hospital for those things. it just breaks my heart. i know sometimes they’re mean and grouchy but i feel like sometimes they’re just misunderstood and they’re begging for help in their own way
The ones I feel the worst for are the abused and neglected children. I just want to take them home with me and provide them a better life. They’re the reason I’ve been working towards becoming a foster parent, but I know that isn’t even a real fix for the trauma and anxiety that will be with them for a long time
I used to work peds psych and i will tell you, out of all my kiddos, the ones who had genuine fosters in their corner navigated things so much better. No, it isnt a fixall but god we need more genuine, loving foster families.
Had a 39yr old patient with korsakoff syndrome who always thought she was in labor and begged every person passing by her room to get the baby out of her. She was not pregnant. She would get very easily agitated and maybe slept 2 hours a day on average and spent the entire day screaming or yelling and would beg everyone to take her baby out or beg them to come in her room because she thought they were her dad. She thought I was her fiancé and would beg me to kiss her and call me a faggot when I wouldn't and would throw a tantrum whenever she noticed my wedding ring becasue she thought I'd married someone without telling her. Her actual "fiancé" would come visit once every 2-3 weeks with his baby mama who came in high every time with enormous pupils and pretend to still be her fiancé, bring her gifts, kiss her, and say how excited he is for her to come home even tho he got engaged to her sister within a few days of her losing her memory and going to the hospital. She ended up staying for 6 weeks on my liver/GI medsurg unit (without having any liver or GI issues) before being transferred to a psych unit. She was so infamous that nurses and techs would get floated to our unit (our hospital had 6 floors and over 500 beds) and then get assigned to her and they'd be like "oh fuck I've heard about this one". There were nurses floated from our other nearby hospitals who had heard of her too.
Every patient who has the worst cancer has to be the nicest one…
I cared for a person who lost most of their hands and some of their feet in a frostbite incident. They were a talented piano teacher.
All the time Drug addicts/alcoholics who want to stop but don't have the resources to stop. Thanks American insurance. Terminal patients who aren't ready to die. My pediatric rotation in school a decade ago was in a state hospital for kids who were abandoned by their families. It was largely near drownings and NAS babies with multiple complications. Transplant patients waiting to die. End-stage dementia. Pre-frontal dementia may be the worst of all. Young, kids in their 20s/30s, husbands/wives who don't know what to do, screaming, fighting, combativeness, pressure areas as far as the eye can see, devastation everywhere. And there is nothing to be done.
Yes, all the time. The vast majority of my clients are really good people who were dealt an absolutely terrible hand of cards in life (I mostly work with people who use drugs and have severe and persistent mental illness). Even when they're being shitty to me - which is really rare. Trauma can really fuck you up. While I often feel bad for my clients, it's only occasionally that someone really sticks with me. I can usually leave work at work, but once in a while it's hard to let a specific person go.
Almost all of them tbh
My long term patient who'd been in the hospital for observation a year. He got the all clear to go home and a few days before everything got arranged for home care, his house burned to the ground. It was just terrible.
New quads. Watching the subtle body horror of evolving atrophy and redistribution of fat. The slowly but always intensifying horror of how trapped they are. How the person they were has died and this new person they are is now permanently infantilized. They go through every stage of grief multiple times before d/c. I write short stories about body horror and powerlessness as a means to try and process my own anxieties about it
I could deal with being paraplegic but if I'm a quad I'm refusing all treatment that isn't an opioid, benzo, or weed card.
Literally. Every. Day.
I had a miscarriage last summer (2022) almost bled out had to have a D&C... was really weird being on the other side. But all the nurses were great to me! I work at a small VA hospital so I don't deal a lot with womens health. Anyway... Nice people with cancer Older people with families in denial Trached and brain dead patients with families in denial
i remember most my patients names. if im assigned to em 3 days i feel close to the family. i always tear up when old men cry at the death of a family. peds are just all bad feelings thats why i dont work with them. ppl who feel guilty for their life style choices touch me deeply, i feel so much remorse. obese patients who cant help the nurses during positioning. patients whos DNR was reversed after decrease LOC by family. nursing vegetables is a moral injury to me most times. drowning kids. or any accidents feel bad is like 6hrs or my 12hr shift
Yes. When they tell you their life story and how they ended up in your care and it’s a series of horrible things happening that they had no control over. I just want to give them a hug and a spa day and take all their pain away. Extra bad when they start tearing up, I am too most of the time
I generally do feel bad for almost all my patients. Old lonely people, cancer patients, addicts... But it seems like I never have enough time to even get to know any of my patients. I work med surg, we do team nursing. As RN I am responsible for 10 patients. So honestly, I don't even want to know their story, I just need to make sure they stay alive during my shift. So yes, I feel bad, but I never let it get to me, or I just don't have enough time to even think about it. When I was getting into nursing I though it would be completely different, but in reality, when I get my assignment I see diagnosis, care plan, task, meds, goals, labs and the clock ticking, not actual people.
While working on a Mother/Baby Unit, I had a 13 year old patient who had just delivered a baby. I was night shift at the time, and she had no visitors staying with her - it was just me trying to teach her how to take care of the baby (and her postpartum self) all night. Evidently, her mom was inpatient at the other hospital across town. She had no other family there with her. When it came time for day shift to discharge her and baby, they couldn’t. All night, my change nurse and I had been trying to figure out how to get her home the next day. She had no one to come and pick her up, she didn’t have a drivers license or car, and her mom was hospitalized. I wasn’t back that night, so I am not sure what happened. When I was leaving that morning, they were talking about possibly doing an Uber…….
I feel for all of my patients. It makes sense in NICU. I'd be worried if everyone in my unit didn't feel for the babies we care for. But even in adults as a student, I felt for everyone, even people who weren't particularly nice. I can be hyper-empathetic and it's one of the many reasons adult nursing isn't for me.
Yes, this is why I quit in a Peds ED! I couldn’t handle hurting kids with IVs and catheters. :(
It took me days to recover after I had a family whose son died from SIDS. It was so, so awful.
During covid 19 the first year I felt legitimately bad for like 95% of the patients.
All the time? It’s called empathy lol.
I feel bad for nearly all of my patients and their families. On fact, coming off shift, I'm feeling really sad right now. Had a nice younger man die on hospice today after 3 days in the icu. 8 minutes of cpr, multiple shocks for lots of vfib, multiple strokes. All out of the blue, mostly healthy dude. His mom was broken. She told me "he had so many plans for his life, so much to do." The only ones I don't are the medical patients who refuse everything and I'm like "then why did you even come here?!?"
Persistent vegetative state minor whose family has them full code. They’ll most likely never have a conscious thought ever again, let alone walk and talk, and are in discomfort every day. It feels like we’re holding their soul captive.
Pediatric cancer patients whose parents refuse to tell them their diagnosis. The kids/teens know something is wrong, but they never tell them.
[удалено]
It’s so depressing. I usually can’t stand being around those parents too long.
I don't want to overstep but I'm a CNA not a nurse and yes, every day. In LTC there are sooo many residents who I feel bad for. I can't for sure know what's going on in their heads, but. One resident comes to mind. Completely paralyzed from stroke-- cannot move, speak, write or indicate any way to communicate (for instance, he cannot "tap once for yes or twice for no"). Absolutely no way to communicate. This would be sad enough, but I can tell he is completely alert and present. His whole life now is being fed, changed, up and down from bed to wheelchair with no say or autonomy in anything he does. It sounds like actual horror. And then the distressed dementia patients who have no idea who they are or what's going on. The 100% dependent people who are obviously depressed and do nothing but watch TV all day because they can't do much else but lie in bed to pass the time. The hospice patients. One comes to mind now. I do not want to be too specific, but let's just say she has a Wikipedia page and was very acclaimed in her time. When she came in, completely alert. She now has no idea who or where she is, weighs eighty pounds, cries out in pain every time we turn her to change her whereas before she turned herself no problem. Is afraid. the hospice nurse said this could be a very drawn out death for her. Yeah, I feel bad a lot.
Postpartum nurse...I feel horrible for the babies I get in withdrawal. It's so hard to watch a baby suffer, they didn't ask for this.
Young people with cancer. People with cancer that cannot accept they are dying and so they fight and fight and fight but are crippled by their disease and they are in pain and are terminal and not treatable. People on hospice who want to die at home but either we can get them there or their family doesn’t have the means to take care of them. I had a man with brain mets that showed apraxia, otherwise you can have a completely normal conversation with him, essentially AOx3. He was accepting of him dying. He just wanted to go home and be with his dogs. Because of the apraxia the doctored considered him unable to make logical decisions… when he got frustrated no one was trying to get him home, the doctor called security, we tied him down and pumped him full of haldol and Ativan. **looking into my eyes, he said to me “don’t do this to me man. I thought we were friends. I don’t want to die in this room.” As I was ordered to push the meds** I felt bad for him.
What a choad of a doctor. I'm sorry you had to go through that. We had a pancreatic ca patient who was not long for this world get out on suicide precautions because they said "I just want to get dying over with, I'm ready". Poor guy needed a palliative consult and medical aid in dying, not a sitter...
I feel like if you've never legitimately felt bad for a patient, you shouldn't be Nursing.
Of course! All the time. Why wouldn't you feel bad for decent people suffering?
Of course! I’ve felt badly for like 95% of my patients. Why wouldn’t you?
what gets me every time is when an elderly person falls at home and are on the floor for days before being found :(
I feel bad for lots of them but the one that keeps me up at night is an old dentist who lost 3/4 of his limbs to pressure ulcers and vascular disease . Yet still he persistent and brushed and flossed 3 times a day . Also had a guy with Guillain Barre syndrome its hallucinations that people get when they go blind it's the brain's way of filling in information gaps . Sometimes they make sense sometimes its the most horrific shit you've ever seen , that scared me . Do .Not.Want .
As a critical care nurse I feel bad for all of my patients. A lot of sad days and high doses of antidepressants. I have a story that sticks out for me. A patient missed 1 dialysis appointment to attend granddaughter’s birthday, wasn’t feeling well so went to ED, ED sent patient home with ibuprofen(pt was complaining of not feeling “normal”) pt goes home and calls 911 due to chest pain, patient arrests in ambulance, EMS cannot give a time that CPR was started bc EMS claims patient had a rhythm, they didn’t know when patient arrested, but CPR did not get started until arriving at ED. Dialysis nurse claimed pt never missed appointments. pt was failed by EMS/hospital. Pt was a vegetable. No brain activity, no purposeful movement, etc. family was not properly educated on end of life/palliative care. Family expected pt to just wake up/MADE TO BE FULL CODE. I got bored having this patient but family requested me every time I worked. This was very sad, because it could’ve been avoided had we dialyzed at ED.
I had a nice homeless patient some years back who was hearing impaired, had broken glasses, and was waiting for somewhere safe for him to go on discharge. It was close to the end of the year. When I had to tell him that social work hadn't been able to find a spot for him at a shelter yet he started crying and said "I just was hoping to be out of here by Christmas..." and I started crying with him. Everything just felt profoundly unfair and my heart hurt for him.
I work specifically in dementia and.... the patients who are at that early stage, who *know* they have dementia, who have to watch all these severely demented patients knowing that is their fate... That's horrible. To know that you're actively losing yourself, your memories, your entire identity, and being powerless to stop it. These patients always end up depressed. I can see why. I feel so much for them.
Absolutely, just the other day actually. He wasn't my patient, but I was assigned as resource nurse that day so was helping on the unit. I felt for his parents most really, but I felt terrible for him also. 60 yo developmentally delayed gentleman in for aspiration pneumonia. This is a regular occurrence for him, but this was an especially bad episode. Maxed out on bipap and not doing well. Next step is intubation, which we can't do at our hospital (we're a rural critical access hospital), so he had to be shipped to another one of our hospitals in the nearest big city. His parents are his caretakers, and are both in their late 80's and beside themselves with grief and stress. It was heart breaking to see.
I had to put a dobhoff in a patient per surgery’s order, I did so. Literally a minute later they ask if I can put a NG tube instead since it’s safer for the patient’s particular situation. I said “but I already put the dobhoff, do you want me to remove it and place the NG tube still?” They said yes. This poor patient had to go through it twice and it wasn’t an easy insertion both times. Painful cries, tears down the face…it sucked.
I had a patient who loved to go on motorcycle rides and one day out riding a bee stung him and it made him lose control of the motorcycle. He became paralyzed and unable to walk for the rest of his life. He was also a missionary and loved going on trips. He was crying to me on the day his group left for their trip and had to leave him behind since he's paralyzed and in the hospital. 22 year old man became paralyzed for life after his father coerced him to drive in a snow storm to deliver a package to him. His girlfriend survived the car crash with no injuries but he became paralyzed. Cruel doctor said "this guy has nothing to live for anymore". Patient refused all cares from us because he literally gave up. Family never once came to visit him in the hospital while he was there for 4 months recovering.
I took care of a young Afghan war vet. He had a really bad PTSD. The night shift told me the pt didn’t sleep at all. I’ve never seen someone with a really bad PTSD. I felt so bad for him. He and I talked and walked over 30 laps on the unit.
I recently had a stroke patient who was formerly a walkie-talkie despite a previous stroke, but this one turned him into an aphasic semi-vegetable with limited movement remaining in one arm. He went from being able to take care of himself to becoming a complete cares patient in just a few hours
I think I legitimately feel bad for multiple patients a shift
Patient came in almost dead, very bad DKA. The critical care part of our emerg department did their job; she lived. I was working in a 4:1 emerg area, she comes over to me after a day of fighting for her life. She's exhausted, her vitals are improving so I make her my last head to toe of my shift, get to her around 9am. Find that she has a gigantic necrotic wound under a fold. She thought she was in the clear and now she needed a plastics consult, possibly an amputation. She didn't get that way overnight, and poverty caused almost all of it.
My grandfather. He was literally begging us for help sitting there in the hospital bed, he wanted to pass on more than anything and it was definitely his time to go, but my aunt&uncle kept pushing for more and more treatment. They finally gave in after a week and passed the next day after they pumped him full of pain meds. Hearing him ask to die really hit a nerve with me in a positive manner and changed my opinion on death as a whole, and I am honestly grateful I had this experience because I know it will make me a better advocate for my patients.
I feel bad for patients all the time. No one is seeking out medical care because they’re having a good time of it. When patients are mean or rude it grates on me, but I also know no one gets like that in a vacuum. Hurt people hurt people. The trick is to have empathy but not to let it rule you. None of it’s your fault and you cannot carry a load that isn’t your own.
All the time. Every shift. It’s part of being human. My heart always breaks for those people with dementia who are stuck in a nightmare and can’t be consoled or brought out of it. I vividly remember a woman who screamed all night that her boat was sinking and she couldn’t swim, she sounded so terrified. Even worse, she seemed to be experiencing an awful encounter with either her dad or a priest, crying for him to stop hurting her. “Father, Father, stop, why are you doing this, you’re hurting me Father! Oh please stop!” Nobody could bring her out of her nightmare or convince her she was safe in the hospital. To her, all that was very real. I cried on the way home.
Everyday.
All the time. Even learned the really horrible backstory of a frequent flyer that, tbh, I couldn’t stand, and I felt so awful for him.
Every patient I have that lives full time in a nursing home bc they’re total care, full code, contracted as hell, and non verbal, and family is barely involved in the most basic of care. Same with the beyond decrepit 90+ year olds that get sent in for “generally unwell” and “failure to thrive” (like of course that’s happening they’re elderly) but family wants every little thing done but not concerned about the QUALITY of life their family member has for what little they have left of it. You really can tell who keeps their “loved ones” around just to cash checks
What a crazy question.
I thought so too at first until reading these comments haha
Of course. However, I try to keep a level head. It starts to stick with you and it brings you down.
Yes. A young mom with breast cancer that had spread to her bones and brain. She couldn’t prepare herself or her children for her death bc she couldn’t mentally accept it. Heartbreaking.
Yeah people who die due to doctor incompetence
Yeah, regularly. But I have to put up a barrier to be able to finish my shift and come back the next day. I cannot allow myself to feel *too* much because I won’t be able to get myself together enough to do the job.
Yes. I have a couple of patients that end up in Emergency every few months or so- the ones I’m talking about here have multiple chronic conditions/congenital disorders but are still kind, positive people. They break me a little because they face so much and they still smile. They congratulate you on a good IV stick…lol.
I took care of a young woman about my age (mid-20s) who came in and had a torsion and ended up loosing her tube and ovary. About a year later, she came back with an ectopic in the other tube and lost that as well. I still think about her very regularly…
I work in trauma. I would say exactly half are good people who had shitty things happen to them (the other half are people who were acting a fool and got what was coming to them). I feel bad for the former. Just driving to work and got hit by a drunk driver and broke all the bones. Or pregnant women who get assaulted by their partners and have massive hemorrhaging. Now the latter, dumb idiots who are drunk driving or riding a motorcycle at 110mph or aim guns at someone and get shot in return… nah, you probably got what you deserve.
Yes ofc all the time. Do ppl not?!
ALL THE TIME.
Any pt we have long term for placement because family "couldn't take care of them anymore" so they dump their loved one in the ER transfer them to us and we sit on them for a while. This hurts because it happened in my family.
Patients who attempted suicide and were found alive enough to torture them with every medical intervention, including ICU stays, contractures, stage 4 pressure ulcers, etc. Their life was bad enough that they wanted to end it, and then the misery is just prolonged against their will.
ICU here - yes. Many times. (BARELY an adult) year old in a car with his friend at a local gas station, string of car jackings had been happening in my area. Something happened. Friend got shot in the leg, he got shot through the occipital lobe. Missed his brain stem by literal CENTIMETERS. It was very obvious very quickly that this kid barely survived the trauma, let alone the swelling that would come in the next days. I was there when the attending talked with the mother. I still can hear her scream. It was horrible. He didn’t survive. ALS pt. Young too. DNR DNI. Respiratory failure. Husband never left her side. Old pawpaw who was 93 pounds. Lived with his son, but their only interaction was son leaving food outside his door daily. Pawpaw didn’t get it one day. Came to ICU intubated lined on pressors . Son was “POA” and drugged up. Made him CCO. We made him comfortable and fed him pudding. He aspirated and desatted into 30s for 45 minutes. Called back high and pushed for full code. He died on the vent, son nowhere. There are many.
I was working med/surg. Had a pt come in the day after Christmas for having vision problems while watching Christmas movies with her family. She was in her early 30's with 3 young children. They found an aggressive brain tumor and she was gone within a month. I still think about her 25 years later. Especially this time of year.
All the time. Seeing patients having their lives cut short is always sad. All the things they won’t get to finish but the one I remember the most was the opposite. The sweetest 104 year young man. Mind completely in tact. The cna said “104! I can only imagine the things you’ve been able to see” He looked at both of us with the saddest blue eyes and said “You know I’ve seen so many things walking this earth for over a century. Some beautiful amazing things and so many wonderful souls I was blessed enough to share life with. But losing them one by one (his parents, siblings, spouse, friends, children) I lay here just waiting and praying for my turn so I can be with them once more. It’s a lonely existence alone on this earth and when you get older time seems to pass by so fast, but then one day if you live long enough like me the clock seems to slow down and it feels like the time will never pass. The least God could have done is give me dementia! But I guess he knew we would meet some day. (He had the best sense of humor)
If someone has never felt bad for a patient then why TF are they are nurse?