September narrative medicine prompt: Write a poem about a patient you took care of in the ICU that was challenging for you, describe that experience, how it felt, images you saw. Why was that particular case hard/challenging for you?
It was an elective surgery
Replacing a worn hip
So she could keep up with the grandkids.
She was a young 80-something year old,
The matriarch of her family,
So alive before her surgery.
When I first met her,
The tangle of cords and tubes
Shrouded her beauty,
No longer alive but not yet dead.
Waiting.
Waiting for family from far away
Wondering why they are saying good-bye.
She wasn't supposed to die.
She was supposed to go home the day after surgery
With a walker and home health.
Instead, she lay in the MICU with tubes
Coming out of natural and unnatural orfices.
How did this happen?
Surgeons claim aspiration pneumonia.
Op note is useless.
So many questions I couldn't answer.
I don't know why she didn't go home.
I don't know how she ended up with me.
Tuesday, post-op day five
The ventilator and pressors are stopped.
She was dead before the epi wore off.
She didn't go home,
She went to the ME
Because we still had no answers.
I listened to her silent chest,
Telling the family she was gone
Even though I knew she was gone
Before she came to the MICU.
I left for clinic,
Feeling empty
And useless.
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