broken heart brushing teeth

ugh. i know, another post about death. sorry in advance.

i love the bee gees. they have a song called, 'how can you mend a broken heart.'

the lyrics go thusly;

how can you mend a broken heart?

how can you stop the rain from falling down?

and then later

how can you this broken man?

i think about this song often, especially because of the dead/dying people i deal with. how many people do you think the average person see die in a lifetime? you know, the average, non-critical care nurse person? before i started working in the medical field, i'd say the number of people i actually saw die was....................none.

since i have entered the nursing field, that number has increased. dramatically. and i'm including the number of people that i take care of that are probably already dead, only, for whatever reason, the 'miracle' of modern medical technology is keeping them 'alive.'

so what?

well, sometimes it really sucks. i've written about how hard the work is sometimes before, and how nurses need to grow thick skin, but the other day, i did have an incident that momentarily cracked my armor.

everybody knows that brushing your teeth is good right? little know fact, the tooth muscle is connected to the heart muscle. antibiotics are commonly prescribed for people undergoing dental procedures, because what happens is that the plaque and junk that is knocked from your teeth somehow ends up in your blood much easier. cut on you hand get infected from a papercut? no problem. infection or abscess on a tooth or in your mouth.....uh-oh, we got problems.

see, infection in your blood eventually ends up in your heart. infection in your heart......no bueno. this is a problem for IV drug users as well. they use dirty needles and get infection their blood just like crappy teeth brusher people. the infection in your blood tends to accumulate in your heart and form fungus. you can even see this fungus on echocardiograms (ultrasound examinations of the heart). it looks like flags of filth, just waving in the flow of blood, hanging onto your valves. again, not a good thing. because these flags of fungus, as i like to call them, can break off and cause all kinds of damage. they act just like blood clots, and do things like get clogged in the capillaries of your extremities, so you have parts or your fingertips and toes that end up with necrotic purple dead parts. also (and this is how you ended up on my critical care unit) these 'septic emboli' floated on up thru your blood system and ended up in your brain, causing you to have a series of major strokes.

so, when you are a pretty good mother of 3 young kids under the age of ten, you're about my age, have a loving family that supports you and has every reason to believe you're gonna be around for a while.......and then this happens to you, it sucks.

this particular patient i had not worked with until the last shift of my 6-fer. work 6 twelve hour shifts, then have 8 days off, not a bad grind ackshully, i kind of enjoyed it. anyways, i had this lady on my last day, so i sort of had an idea of what i was in for. she had come it after the birth of her last kid (another little known fact, besides people having dental procedures done, preggo women are another at-risk group for Bad Things to Happen Related to Teeth Issues) and was just sick. eventually, some of the bits of the heart fungus flags of filth broke off and caused the stroke and dead bits of fingers and toes. she went from walkie talkie new mom to unresponsive (human-like) vegetable in less than a month.

less. than. a. month.

needless to say, sadness.

well, in defense of my sanity, i try NOT to think too much about these things, specially whilst i am at work. but, thru the course of my night taking care of this lady, i started looking at some of the pictures her family had posted on the walls of her room.

mistake number one right there, lemme tell ya,

besides the famblee pics, she had this paper, no signature, just a heart and the phrase, 'mom please wakeup.'

damn.

it was from a kid just learning to write, obviously, maybe a 5-6 year-old level.

thus the wheels started turning. what would it be like, to lose my wife now? how would i could i cope? what about if she lost me? it could happen. i'm young, fairly healthy, but then so was my patient.

sometimes i complain about the number of of old people i have to take care of, and lets face it, it is mostly old people, breaking down with years and abuse and cumulative stuff that i take care of. so then i get a young person and man, it just messes with my world. gimme back the oldies, quick.

anyways, the care of this lady, and that damn picture/drawing that i found cracked the old armor for a bit. i'm getting better at holding in my feelings, not that it would have mattered with her, she hadn't opened her eyes in two weeks, and if her hearing was still intact, it probably wouldn't have been the first time she'd heard crying in her room.

excuse me while i go floss and brush.