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How many of you have actually watched the dying process in your own personal life? How many of you seen a freshly dead body? Not at the funeral home after they get their makeup and all the crazy shit morticians due to make them look "normal"? Let me tell you it is an ugly sad thing. I hope most of you answer no to that question. Sometimes innocence is a very good thing. For me it is just a job. I love my job I really do. It brings me great joy to care for people in a long term care environment. I am able to make a positive difference in peoples lives when it matters most. However with great joy also comes great darkness. Now a days these facilities all also do rehab so we get the joy of getting people well and sending them home. Often times though.... this IS there home for now and the only place they will discharge to is to their Heavenly Father. For those that lived a good life and are at peace, it can be a beautiful time with their families. For other tortured souls they fight and claw their way back to life time after time looking for some peace or closure. These souls generally are all alone. The only ones tending to them are people there to do a job. Yes most of them are very good people, but like I said they are only their to do a job. While they are yet alive we do everything we can for them. The moment they give up their ghost everything suddenly changes. We take away all the life preserving equipment they where using. We clean them up. We try to make them look like they where just sleeping. God forbid that there family would see the slack gasping jaw or the cold stare of wide open dead eyes. Then we as staff have to do a mental 180, act as normally as possible, and turn our attentions to those still alive. The other patients don't deserve to be touched by this darkness. It is a burden for the staff and staff alone. Yes alone, we don't talk about it at work. There is no rules saying we can't but it is just awkward. Anyone that has done this work for any length of time has experienced this also, so maybe there is no need to talk about it. I bet many of you even mature members here have never really experienced this, however much of this work is done by very young people that should be in the prime of their lives. But we all carry the same burden. For me it is just a job. You are supposed to get better at your job as you go along. However for me, early in this carrier I was good at turning off these dark feelings. Now though I find myself feeling more and more. It isn't something you just get over, it is a burden you carry, and in my case I have become more sensitive to it. Maybe I didn't value life then. Now I am trying really appreciate the moment and live life abundantly. Life is so precious and can be gone in an instant, and when it is gone it is gone. In life we are given so many second chances, but we don't get a second chance at life itself. Sometimes when they die I am happy. For two different reasons... I am happy they are not suffering any more. Other times I am happy that I am not suffering any more. Yes sometimes I admit I can be happy after a very difficult patient passes. I feel a bit guilty about it... but then again is just a job for me. Certain ones really stick in my head though. I remember the first time I gave post mortem care. I had just returned from my dinner break. I was asked to assist with someone on the other side of the building. I can still hear my partner's whistling that she did as she worked. For me it was creepy as fuck, but for her it helped her deal with it. With another patient, one night I was called to assist changing him because he was being combative. The next evening at the same time I was call back again to assist with post mortem care. He had so much fight in him one day and it was gone the next. I remember one that still bothers me till this day. I was my patient. We knew her death was imminent. However it was getting very late for my dinner break. So I ask my supervisor if could go. She told me "yes, there is nothing for you to do now anyways". When I came back from my break she was gone. To this day I regret, that I devalued her life so much that I wanted my break. I should have stayed with her as she passed. But then again... for me it is just a job. A few weeks ago I saw something I had never seen before. We lost one that was truly a pain in the ass. However after she passed, EVERY ONE of the staff felt a need to go visit. Half of them where crying. Seeing so many of my co-workers crying really touched me deep down. Then a little while later for the first time I saw the patients family. (first time I had seen them visit) They stayed for a very short time and then stripped her room clean of her belongings and left. Somehow she was estranged from her family and it tortured her greatly. All of the staff loved her deeply, but because of her emotional woundedness she probably didn't believe it. Just this week I received a cell call about the death of a man that I loved dearly. It wasn't surprising because he was older and was sick for a long time. Then shortly afterwords we lost a patient at work that I really loved. Thankfully he was surrounded by his family as he left this world. I think the reason I am thinking about this so much is because of Covid-19, and just how fucked up it is making the whole death process. You see that patient that was dying was the only one in the building allowed to have visitors. The building is on lock down with no visitors allowed. Many of my patients the next time they will see their loved ones is when they are on deaths door. Then I think about these two men that died. They where loved by their communities, In normal times both would have HUGE celebratory type funerals. But because of the pandemic, their families and loved ones will not even be allowed to grieve properly. Then I think of my colleagues that work in an acute setting. Probably most don't carry this same burden I do, but they soon will. Hospitals are places to go and get well, not die. Most of the patients I lost lived long lives and suffered a long time before leaving this earth. However for my colleagues, their patients will be people that where vibrantly alive just days or weeks before. It is so sad and fucked up.
PS Please don't worry about me, am in a very good place with my mental health. I just needed to vent a bit. This was my therapy. Thank you for reading to the end :)
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