We can only lose.
That Doc spent dozens of hours thinking about those patients. Changing drips, trying new treatments, listening to nurse feedback, all to try to keep someone already mostly out the door from leaving for good.
We in EMS get maybe 20-30 minutes with a patient if we're lucky. Rural folks who rolled their eyes, trust me when I tell you I had my own days of almost falling asleep on long transports back in my rural New Mexico days.
The point to remember is that we lose people differently. It hits differently for us because of the brevity of our experience with them. How many times have you gone to give a death notification to the family and had to check the name on your glove or ask the other rescuers present, "Was it Dave or Dan?"
I commented on another forum about my personal record for deaths in a 24 hour shift: 6. This was interpreted as dick measuring which, to be honest, is our go to reaction to most metrics. "You can't ride with me until you've scooped teenage brains off the highway!" is how folks with 3 years in treat the new guy.
The 6 count from about 15 years ago has only ever been threatened with being dethroned once and that was on a Wednesday afternoon a few years ago. I responded to a call that resulted in the 6th fatality of the day. And it was only 2pm, a full 18 hours to go in the shift.
Oh, and my 16 year old was riding along with me.
First call out of the gate was a DOA in public view. The first time she ever saw a dead human being and the sun hadn't even come up yet. By mid morning we had responded to a handful of critical calls with a variety of locations to pronounce death: An apartment, an alleyway, 2 at the hospital if I recall, and when number six didn't respond to the Epi, ETT and LUCAS I looked over at her and she just gave me a small smile that said "Sorry, Dad, I know you tried your best." Her mom came to pick her up after that call.
I never got to number seven.
I think about that day and the absolute chaos and death and destruction she saw. She saw more in those hours than most people see in a lifetime but it was such a brief blip, just a short exposure and she tells amazing stories about it now (The pocket chicken story is better than most comedians I've seen. I'll share soon). She saw more death and dismay than that ICU Doc has seen in a week and she saw it in 8 short hours but it's different. It's so different.
Check on your healthcare peeps. Not everyone is doing OK like they say. Some of them are collapsing at home, turning to alcohol or, gods forbid, blogging again.
No one wins the dead body game. There's no finish line that makes you immune to it all. Just be thankful that we are only invested for a short time because the ones we counted as a success, some of the best work we've ever done to get a critical patient to the ER, results in a new ICU Doc collapsing at home a week later.
It'
s different.
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