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Till the death tear us apart

"Why you sad? Is one of your patient dead?" That's the first question came from Mak Tiri when I told her I'm sad. Yeah, by now I know what type of nurse I am. Baper, they said. Acronyms of 'bawa perasaan', mean I let my feeling take over in many situations, mostly. Its hard for me to moving on in patient's death, especially if I know we can do more to save them.

This morning, I once again, lost my patient. This time it was a granny with HAP Post Resection Tumor, she has a Diabetes Type II too, a typical complicated case. With a slim chance to win. She never open her eyes spontaneously, and her breathing frequency is always high since she brought in. The others nurses and doctors already pessimistic about her condition. And last night, her condition finally deteriorated. Firstly, her blood pressure decrease till 79 at sistole, then we gave her dopamine in syringe pump. It help, at least for few first hour. But then she started to have bradicardy and in no time she was apnea, and lastly, no pulse. Of course we gave her some life saving drugs and performed CPR, her pulse were back for a minutes. Then, silence.

One of her family watched almost all of the process, I wondering what he was thinking at that moment. But in the end, he and the others family's members seems calm and accepted everything. Kind of my family's reaction when my grandpa passed away, we accepted it was the best destiny, since my grandpa already old and suffering enough from his heart disease.

Yeah, it's seems more easier to accept fact if the one who died is in late age. After all, dead are cycle of life. All living soul will taste it someday. Even the paramedics accepted the fact easily. Why not? It's part of life. Besides the sorrows and lost that follows the process, it unavoidable.

There's something that made me regretful. I did something very insensitive during her dying. I chuckled when I read the senior nurse's charts, it was already wrote done about the patient condition, but the chart was all about her condition at some times at the night, when she still alive. See, that's the human chart. A plan. A wish. But absolutely, everything will go according to Allah's plan. Astagfirullahal'adzim.

As many times before, my mind start wondering. To the others patient. It's a foreigner. He stay here for months, even has an Indonesian girlfriend. He got motorcycle's accident versus a pedestrian, he fell down and hit his head. No other single wound in his body. But the brain got it bad. What bothered us is, he has his arms tattooed all over. It increases difficulty to find some vein, to start an IV line or draw some blood for test. On his last day, we failed to find the periphery vein, so the blood finally drawn from his femoral vein, the last choices in normal circumstances. What was he think when he did it? The tattoos thing. Did he thought he never get sick? Or it's only followed an impulse. An urge to do something he'll like. Or maybe like the said, YOLO. You only life once. So enjoy it, in every way you want to. But hey, with that colorful arms, he gave us reason to hurt him more than needed. Yeah, he was tall, good looking, have a great life and all, but in the end, he only human. And human, as great as their body are build, a single wrong move can led us to forever silence.

Maybe nurses and doctors always seem unaffected and often cracks jokes about their patient's dead, but the truth is no. We still have feelings. And sometimes, it's a live-changing experience. It still have a great effect, either we show it or not.

And this morning, I can't help but wondering. How will I get through it? More importantly, do I can have husnul khotimah? I wish so. Aamiin. I still have a billion things to learn, I'll do it. Step by step, one by one. I want to understand it first, let it have way to my heart so I never forget the lesson behind it. And do it to improve my life. So now, instead off day dreaming about something related with till the death tear us apart, I must focus to something that will absolutely happen, the death itself.

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