Let me at the outset apprise you all that this post is related to death and dead people ,so all who are squeamish, depressed or disgusted ; read no further and the rest of you go ahead and enjoy(If not enjoy,then just read.). Also let me add as an afterthought that I respect the dead and by no means do I intend to disrespect them. So here I go...
Death is something we all have encountered at one point or the other in our lives. For me it's a professional reality, and a hazard for the people I take care of in my professional life. Especially during my time working in the ER (emergency room) . And one thing we do as a nurse after a person dies is death care ,in laymens term 'bag em and tag em'. Well it's not as simple as it sounds.
I still remember as a nervous first year nursing I was called by one of my interns( now you see interns are the super seniors and the rank highest in the student food chain and first years like you all know are the zooplanktons and phytoplanktons of the student world. Yea the lowest. ). Anyway there was this patient that had died and the bed was screened from all sides with curtains. Unfortunately for me I was in the line of sight of the intern ,who called me to help her give the death care. That was probably my first encounter with a dead body of a person who I didn't know ,that too in an enclosed space. (Man !! Having watched so many horror movies , I had a flashback of some of the scary scenes.) I had a tingling sensation at the back of my neck , a chill spread all over my body and the hair on my hand were all upright. I would have died of a heart attack had somebody touched my shoulder at that very moment. However, after the initial shock, there I was warily looking around as I gingerly held the hands and tied the thumbs together over the stomach , then I bound the great toes together. (We do this because the body goes into ' rigor mortis ' ,which means the body becomes stiff after few hours.)The intern on the other side was busy removing the catheters and tubes. Finally we took a white sheet which we called 'mortuary sheet ' or in common parlance shroud and covered the body and secured it firmly by tying the head end and foot end. Then ultimately we 'tagged' the body ; i.e. we wrote the patient's name and number.
Finally it was all done. I returned tired and famished to my room after duty but still I couldn't shake off this weird feeling of being watched by someone, as if someone or something is there behind me, it sort freaked me out. This unexplainable cloud hovered my whole being for quite some time ,something akin to a bad hangover.Thankfully after a couple of days one fine morning all was back to normal.
Well after that experience as long as I was a student nurse I didn't give death care I would just scurry off or appear busy. But that was eons ago almost like a lifetime back when I was a novice and wasn't responsible for some ones life. As I mentioned earlier that I worked in the emergency and have seen many deaths, I have lost count of since the first one. Many have come and gone whose mortal remains were deftly 'bagged' by my now adept hands as their spirits left their corporeal self for the other realms.
Life is all about hits and misses and so is death you can cheat death once or twice but ultimately it catches up with you. And since we are talking about death and all ,let me narrate an interesting near death incident where this patient came unconscious ,no respiration ,no heart rate , most probably in respiratory arrest. He was immediately intubated ( a tube was placed down a throat connected with a bag to pump air into his lungs.) Then one of the doctors checked the pupils , they were pinpoint,(pinpoint pupils is a classic evidence of opioid poisoning), and the history of the patient also corroborated the fact that he had opium overdose so he was given the antidote 'naloxone' . You won't believe what happened next. Here was this guy with tubes in his mouth , not breathing on his own and unconscious at that. On injecting the the antidote this guys just gets up with a bellow and and pulls out his ET ( endotracheal tube) and the tube in nose ( Ryles Tube) and removes his cannula before anyone could react. You can imagine the shock of all the people in the ER that day. Well ,that guy was darn lucky. I hope he mends his ways or there will be no next time for him. Then there are cases where a person who was just perfect a while ago , is now collapsed . Yea people, the uncertainty of it all. Life's like that.
However, I don't want to end this post with a philosophical thought, or something along those lines because death is something we know and it's a reality we all have to face.But I'd like to add that , Yes , I might have been perturbed and distracted with death in the early phase of my professional life, but as time has passed by I have understood that it's an inherent aspect of my work and I have to do it with the same sincerity and professionalism with which I deal the other aspects. Like they say 'it comes with the territory'.
I too had goosebumps while I gave the first death care of my life!!!!
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