It was all incredibly surreal… the things they try to prepare you for while in nursing school and orientation at a new job. It’s the things scenes people say, “Oh yeah, I saw that on Grey’s.” Or, “that sounds like an episode of Chicago Med.” In most medical scenarios, Grey’s doesn’t even begin to touch a sliver of the truth. Doctors and nurses don’t have sex in the on call rooms, doctors (no offense) DO NOT ambulate patients and do half the things that are portrayed in that stupid series.
So, back to the title of this… morbid, am I right? Well, let me tell you… it happens. It happened today and it happened to my coworker and I. We work in the cardiac Cath lab, so we normally don’t see this happen very often. I was in the middle of my chicken strip and French fry lunch, talking shop with my a few of my coworkers, and we heard the code blue called over the intercom. We went silent and looked at each other. “Code blue front entrance, code blue front entrance, code blue front entrance.” No more than a millisecond went by, but it felt like an entire chapter of a book, and Bea said, “Carol just took a patient out to the front entrance.” Then, all at once, we jumped up and headed for the front doors of the hospital, dragging the crash cart behind us.
Everyone and their dog were there for the code. Of course, normally ICU and ER are the main teams to respond to code blues. But the Cath lab was the closest department with a crash cart. It was like pulling up on a chaotic mob scene. Dr. P was the ER doc on at that time, and he was running the code. At some point during this tragic series of events, it became glaringly evident that she wasn’t responding to what the team had done. She had had intranasal Narcan, and an IO catheter placed.
Once the crowd thinned out, time seemed to crawl. Now, I was really starting to notice how Y O U N G this person was. She couldn’t have been any more than 25 years of age. Granted, I am 28, but the child like features she had made it much more evident. As the time seemed to stop, I studied her features. This young woman had multiple facial piercings, tattoos, and was so thin. It was then that I noticed she had 3 “prison” looking tattoos on her right forearm. It was scribbled ink upon a very olive-colored canvas. It took me a second to realize what they said, but once it sank in, tears filled my eyes. The tattoo were the names of 3 little boys, assuming her children.
After she was coded for what seemed like hours, the ER doc said it was time to move her to the ER. My coworker did compressions down to the emergency department, and I never saw that girl again. I could only assume she had met her fate. It may have been a small frame of my day, but it will be with my forever.
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