I can't really think of anything else as a title for this.
This isn't a story where there's a plot line I must follow. This will contain something I experienced first hand in so many times that I was in the hospital.
When I first started to study Nursing, I didn't have expectations, I didn't muse about the details of becoming a nurse - all I was focused into was getting the course over and be a 'nurse'. No definite image of what I was getting myself into. And then we started to have our clinical rotations at different hospitals where my University was affiliated. We had our duty at private hospitals and at public or government hospitals. I never really knew what poverty was until I saw people die because of it.
The reason I wrote this was to talk about what I experienced at public hospitals while I am a student nurse - someone who could barely do anything for her patient.
The first time someone died at my care was during my rotation at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at some public hospital, i was at my second year at that time. That baby boy, I would never, ever, forget him, left a mark in my life. It was sad, yes, in a detached way I felt his sudden lost too and what sucked the most was that, his parents could do something, they could, yet they gave up. I didn't really know why, and what was their reason as to why they made the decision to just stop resuscitating the baby.
The baby got admitted because of Pneumonia and furthermore, sepsis. He was so cute, chubby and he smiled, to me or to any nurses who played with him, during that time when he was confined. He was on oxygen via nasal cannula, an IV line hooked on his hand which was so small, his veins were so fragile, we had to reinsert the needle too many times because it kept on rupturing and it always tore within me when he cried, because it hurt. It must have hurt, he was so small and he endured too much pain already. They were so poor, indigent, couldn't even bring their own face towel so the nurses at that public hospital could provide tepid sponge bath to their son during his febrile episodes. He already got discharged , well and healthy, he was fine. But then not a week later, the mother returned him to us, at NICU, because he was on a fifty-fifty situation, he couldn't breath, his pulse pressure was so wide, his heartbeat was so fast, his fever was bordering to 40 degrees Celsius and they were on full panic. The nurses that time moved so fast, they had to rescucitate him, keep him breathing, save him. He was so small but he got hooked to ambubag and as much as the nurses and doctors wanted to put him on to mechanical ventilator, which will cost money to the parents, they couldn't. The reason? The parents couldn't afford it. He was so small but he received CPR, the fingers of the nurses making an indentation to his chest, squeezing life into him and the baby fought. I watched as he fought to breath and live. I watched as the ECG drew how his heart, no matter how hard it was, kept on beating.
Thanks God, and for a few hours I was able to breath with relief because they were able to rescucitate him, but he was under our close watch. The baby, during that few hours never woke up, never cried. The doctor said to the parents, if you couldn't afford the mechanical ventilator, you can always use the ambubag, provided you have to pump it 24 hours non-stop until he was stable. I watched as the decisions warred on the parents' faces and I wanted to yell at them to say 'of course! We will do anything just keep our child alive' but no they didn't. They didn't fight, they resigned themselves to the fact that their child will die anyway. Nobody knew what was in store for that baby boy, nobody knew for certain if he'd die or he'd live and that depended on that decision if his parents would sacrifice themselves just to pump that freaking ambubag 24 hours, non-stop. They could have tried, they could. But I couldn't blame them, I couldn't fault them because it was their decision and he was their son, I was just the student nurse who took care of that baby boy during the three weeks he stayed on that NICU. Maybe they were tired, so emotionally drained that they just stopped fighting, maybe not for themselves but for the baby boy. Maybe they wanted his suffering to end and that was brave, letting go someone you love.
I wouldn't understand it yet, how they could swallow despite making that decision, but maybe someday I would. I must.
That baby boy died, after we (the student nurses who volunteered to do the pumping in the ambubag) stopped. He went on an arrest, endured CPR and then just like that, he died. The parents cried inside the NICU, the mother wailed, the father choked on his tears but all they could do was watch as I (swallowing my own tears) did the post mortem care.
I covered him with white blanket, he was still warm but I knew that minutes from then that warmth would seep out of his skin, his muscles would stiffen and he'd really be gone, his essence would be gone. A baby, because of poverty, was gone.
I knew that it wouldn't be the last time I'd experience that b i would never forget how that baby boy made me feel something, something so precious, and I'd forever thank him for that.
I couldn't do much for my patients, but I could provide genuine care for them and do at the best of my capabilities and competence my duty as their nurse.
