Last night I was dealing with 2 deaths in red zone ED itself.
As contrary to what others believe that doctors are acclimatized to death, what I can say is, I have seen death in the past 2 years more than most people in their lives, but the scene of family members weeping in front of the cold body lying lifelessly is still not a good sight to me.
There is an old aunty who was involved in a road traffic accident, and sustained multiple extensive intracranial hemorrhage.
Her conscious level started to drop after few hours, and by evening she is already not responding to call.
'Ma, I am back to see you', uttered her son who rushed back from JB to see her one last time.
There was no response from his mother, not even a single sound, except for the constant beating sound of the cardiac monitor.
The woman died 3 hours after being sent to the ward for comfort care.
I wondered how many of us would be saying the exact same words when we are back to see our parents?
Saying it for a thousand times when they are gone does not make up the time loss when they are still around.
Another one was an Indian gentleman who has a wife and 2 children, suffered from heart attack.
We were starting chest compression from the moment he entered the ED door upto the zone itself, as he were already lost his consciousness before arrival.
He did not make it.
Heart rate and pulse oximetry not recordable.
Breath sound and heart sound could not be heard.
cardiac monitoring showed asystole (flat line)
blood pressure unrecordable.
pupils 5mm/5mm fixed and dilated.
As I penned down this routine words which is not something new to me, family members rushed in.
I did not talk to them. As I believe no words can replace a living man.
I was observing from afar, saddened by the harsh fact that we cannot save all lives, and eventually everyone will have to return to their creator.
I do not believe there is any doctors who are good in dealing with death, maybe not from my experience.
Life is temporary. Death is inevitable.
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