Third person singular

June 3, 2010 at 11:17 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Last night I managed to get through an entire call without filling out a death packet.  Which by itself is not unusual.  The odd thing was that there were two patients we expected to progress to brain death, and neither of them did.  For some reason, those patients always die on my watch.  I am the queen of death-related paperwork.  So it’s always a surprise when they don’t.

I guess I should be grateful that the only patients who die on me are the ones we expect to die.  It would suck a whole lot more if these were patients whom we expected to recover.  Or at least to live.

Which reminds me of a story I’ve been meaning to tell for a while now.

Not too long ago, I was on call one weekend when this patient came in with–I forget exactly what– an aneurysm rupture, a huge hypertensive bleed, or some other nonsurvivable injury.  She was in bad shape: comatose, intubated, extensor posturing, but with intact brainstem reflexes at that point.  It was early in the morning, so everyone who was on call that weekend was there.

So far, this is all par for the course.  We looked at the scans, and decided to have a family conference to steer the family gently away from any kind of heroic measures and towards minimal intervention.  It all seemed to be going well until the very end.

Then one of the patient’s family members asked, “You all are Christians, yes?”

Stunned silence.  At some point in neurosurgery’s neverending exercise in giving bad news, you start to think you’ve heard it all, and have answers for anything anyone could possibly ask.  And then they ask that.

So then she says, “Who here is a Christian?”

The doctors all looked at each other: two Jews, one Indian, one Pakistani, and one member of an obscure sectarian religion.

After a long awkward pause, the patient’s nurse finally raises her hand.

And the relative says, “Oh I’m so glad she’s being cared for by Christians!”