Exhale

So last Friday on my usual overnighter at the hospital, I experienced the hardest on-call night I ever had to deal with.  I was called to 4 code blues (situations where a patient has gone into cardiac arrest) for three different people.  I only got 2.5 hours of sleep that night. 

It is the spiritual care dept. policy for every chaplain to go to every death in the hospital and every code blue on your units assigned.  On nights you are staying overnight, you go to every death and code blue in the entire hospital.  Most of the time it's good, but some times the nights are rough, as it was this past Friday.

I say this because the last two code blues, the patients were put on ventilators (breathing assistance).  When their family finally came to the hospital, they explained to the doctors and nurses that the patients never wanted to be placed on life-saving machines, including ventilators. 

So that morning, after the 4 code blues, I was there to witness 2 deaths.  But this morning was much different as well, because I stood there with the family as one of the patients were extubated (ventilator tubes pulled out), and the patient's breathing slowly stopped on their own.  I have been present during a code blue to witness a death, but never in the room to actually watch a person die.  It was every emotion that you could think of: joy in celebrating the life of the patient, sorrow in seeing the end of a life, anger of the abruptness of losing a loved one and not being able to do anything, grateful to hold their hands in their last few moments of life, and just shock due to the reality of the situation.  It was beautiful.  It was frustrating.  It was a moment in which God could only be present, acting in the situation, feeling all of these emotions, and supporting everyone. 

One of the philosophies I teach to everyone is just to breathe.  I realize that it holds more weight than I could ever expect.