One More Thing
This is difficult for me to talk about. I’m an ICU nurse and I’ve been present for a lot of people’s end of life. The reason it is so difficult to discuss is surprisingly simple: People come into ICU, they get put on a ventilator (which involves a tube in the trachea, through the vocal cords), and then they can’t speak. Depending on the medications they require, they aren’t commonly conscious, either.
So the communication happens before the ventilator, and either a) they didn’t have time to express ideas about regrets due to the urgency at the time or b) they didn’t think it was time to express those ideas…they thought there would be more life, more opportunities. The problem is that they didn’t tell any family members or loved ones, either, prior to coming in.
So I come on to a shift several days later. I don’t actually know this person. I haven’t heard their voice, or their ideas. What I have heard about my patient is from their visitors, the loved ones and the family. But what I’m doing with my day is trying to remind those same people that under the tubing, behind the equipment and the medication (that are the bread and butter of my job), under the blanket and on the bed is their loved one.
The person is the point. But we also tend the machines. Machines for breathing, machines for making the heart keep pace, machines helping to reduce the effort a tired heart needs to pump, machines to do the work of the failing kidney, machines to remove the need for the tiny spaces left in diseased lungs to push more gas than they can ever hope to move.
And we tend to use meds. Meds that assist the machines. Meds that push the body to do what it no longer can. And the patient moves from day to night and back to day. And the family wants us to do one more thing. And another. Because they want their person back. Sometimes we can do that. We can give you your person for more time together at life.
Sometimes we can’t. And if you’ve ever wanted to know about the regrets of terminal patients, these are the regrets many people can never express. The regret that they weren’t able to tell their loved ones and families they didn’t want all the things. Maybe some of the things, for a while. But not all of them, until the end. The regret that the loved ones and families want to help, but as the patient, they physically could not tell them no, don’t do that, it’s not helping.
So I guess the point is this: Don’t wait until you are there. Have a conversation with your significant others about what you want to happen if the worst happened. Don’t put it off as having bad thoughts or ideas or even that it’ll invoke some sort of fate that wasn’t otherwise going to happen. Discuss organ donation as if you really had the chance to do it.
Let your loved ones know what you think, and leave your actual end of life regrets for stuff like not going to Disneyland that time, or spending too much time driving to work.
Story credit: Reddit / StefanTheNurse