To say I’m traumatized is an understatement. I’ve never had to witness anything like this in all my years in healthcare.

I have recently been picking up per diem shifts at a LTC facility for ShiftKey, and at around 1600 I hear the RN yelling “help! Help!” from one of the rooms. I was the first one on sight and I see her with her arms around a resident, trying to check pulse, resident is slumped over and has blood spewing PO and nose. Completely unresponsive. I immediately go grab her chart to check code status: FULL CODE fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I go to grab the crash cart and IT’S ALMOST FUCKING EMPTY. THERE IS NOTHING ON HERE. THERE IS NOTHING THAT WE NEED ON THIS DAMN CART. Uggggh. One of the CNA’s called 911 and fire/EMS shows up. They are doing CPR, and with every compression more and more blood is coming out, like a waterfall. They couldn’t even get a suction in because there was so much… they weren’t able to get a pulse and pt was officially pronounced at the hospital. God rest her soul. I will never forget that, and the image of her being wheeled out on the stretcher, blue and grey in the face, will forever be seared into my mind. She had a GI bleed out of nowhere and drowned in her own blood. It was a ruptured EV.

What an awful way to go.

What’s even worse, is that this was completely out of the blue. This resident has been completely independent as long as she’s been there. 100% continent, was able to hold a conversation, completely cognizant. Life is so unfair and fucked up. I feel so bad for her poor daughter, who had just now got the courage to travel (didn’t for the last 2 years because of covid) and had just landed in Alabama to visit family when we had to call and tell her that her mother had passed away. Fuck.

I don’t know if I can do this whole nursing thing for 30 more years…