Unusual

This morning we met and talked about the events of late last week, and the weekend. Standard fare for Monday morning meeting. Two of the nurses took care of a patient late last week who died by bleeding out. I had not heard it described before. Blood, they said, poured out of his superpubic tube, and out his rectum; blood also filled his colostomy bag. There was no way to stop it, even when they knew what was going to happen: no way to stop him from dying this way. The family was distraught. There was an enormous pool of blood on the carpet. The smell, they said, was the worst of it: M. said, there is no worse smell than a gastric bleed. The two nurses washed his body in shaving cream, and scrubbed the spot, and somehow this worked to mask the smell, and the family was able to be with the patient and see him, and not his human body letting go of all its blood from every orifice, from everyplace blood shouldn't be.

The patient had had a number of affairs, apparently, and his wife chose to allow him to die at home, and take care of him. She slept next to his bed with her hand in his hand. She allowed his mistress to come and say goodbye as he was dying.

I went into the bathroom after the meeting to wash my hands. I wash my hands a number of extra times a day lately. I am hoping to avoid swine flu, in addition to the usual things I'm trying to avoid. I cried a little when I washed my hands. No sound or rolling tears, just a fullness in my eyes and throat. It was done by the time I dried my hands.

Why people do what they do. Such mercy.