Bed 16
The hallway of the ICU floor is unfamiliar and cold. Shifts are stressful. Rounds are long. Painful. Attendings are stern. Chaos fills the ICU floor. When there isn't a massive group of people rounding, there are procedures and interventions underway on the ICU floor. With intubating bed 8. Coding bed 1. Placing lines in there. And pulling lines here. Doctors and nurses and pharmacist and Respiratory therapist armed with medicine try and try here in this ICU floor to make a dent in the enemy that is disease. And sometimes, most often than not, we do not win the battle. We succumb to loss. We succumb to death. Bed 16. We will be withdrawing care tonight. She's on pressors. On maximum vent settings. She's on continuous dialysis. She is swollen now, her hands and face edematous. She is hardly the woman she was a few weeks ago, few days ago... She reminds me of another ICU room I stood in 10 years ago. My grandmother's. Being just a child then and seeing her...