monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a night.
So I've been up since 3, when Rachel called from work to say that she had just come back from a Code Blue (heart and breathing stopped), and she was sent to observe the code because her floor wasn't busy tonight, and her preceptor (trainer, sort of) thought it would be a good chance for her to observe a code. Only when Rachel got to the code, she was surprised that the patient was someone we know!
So Rachel was calling to let me know the patient had died, and she told me to let another friend of ours (Kathryn) know about it, too. Rachel said that a good friend of the patient, Sue Ellen, someone else we know, had been at the hospital with Jill, the patient, and had gone home to get her address book so she could contact Jill's family. Rachel told me when I talked to Kathryn I should tell Kathryn that Sue Ellen wanted us all to pray for her. Sue Ellen and Jill and Kathryn were all in the Bible study class that Rachel and I went to in the Spring, and they had just started a new Bible study last week, but Rachel and I missed the first class.
So I called Kathryn, said a prayer for Sue Ellen to have strength and comfort, and then sat at the computer to check my email, since I was up. Because when I'm awake, I check my email!
Then my cell phone rang again and it was Rachel. I reported to her that I had talked to Kathryn, and then Rachel asked if I could bring her something to eat, because she was stressed and hungry! That lunatic! I just saw her before she went to work, and she told me that she had planned to pack a lunch and she sounded very prepared! She wasn't planning to be at work all night, though, because when she went in, it was supposed to only be for a few hours, and then she was expecting to be put on call for the rest of the night. So she must have only taken enough food for a few hours.
Rachel couldn't just go get something out of the vending machine, because she's on Phase one of the South Beach Diet, and has been encouraging me to do it, too, but this is the exact situation I was afraid of - being at work with nothing to eat! I can't be working at my job, taking phone calls from idiots in the middle of the night, with nothing to eat!
Since I was wide awake, and also nosy, and thinking that possibly I could hang out and be of some help and comfort to Sue Ellen, I got dressed, made a South Beach-friendly lunch for Rachel of a can of refried black beans with cheese on top, and a baggie full of celery sticks, and I headed out to the hospital.
I delivered the food to Rachel and she told me what floor Jill had been on, which was good, since I couldn't ask the operator for the information because I didn't know Jill's last name, or Sue Ellen's! I only knew them from Bible study, and I'd never heard their last names - apparently the Bible study is like an AA meeting!
Sue Ellen was up at the nurses station, waiting until the coroner got there, so I went up and hugged her and they sent us off to sit on some comfy chairs next to vending machines, and we got a pop and talked about what a shock it was. The coroner was a nice old guy, and he knows Sue Ellen's husband, and the nursing supervisor came by, and she knows Sue Ellen's husband, and I was wondering who in the heck Sue Ellen's husband was, because I've never met him, and I only know he's had a stroke and is in a wheelchair and can't get around without help.
Talking to the coroner was very interesting and I told him that, but he said only a tiny bit of his job is interesting and the rest is paperwork. They aren't sure why Jill died, because she was having severe sciatic pain, which is what she went to the hospital for, and she had taken a lot of pain meds for that, plus what she'd been given in the hospital, so maybe it was drug interaction, or it could have been a heart attack because she was 51 with diabetes, and the coroner said that a heart attack in someone who is insulin-dependent can present itself in unexpected ways. So there will be an autopsy, and we'll find out more later, because it sounds like Sue Ellen has Jill's medical power of attorney.
As I walked out to the car with Sue Ellen, carrying Jill's things out with us, I asked her why all these people knew her husband, and she said he had been a real estate developer, who developed the big nice subdivision on the west side of town. Then we put Jill's things in the trunk of Sue Ellen's big black Lexus (Who knew?!) and I got in my seven-year-old minivan and came home.
So, wow, all that has been happening and by the time I got home from the hospital, I was hungry, but I was also a bit worried about my health, since I am the same age as Jill, so I came in and heated up another can of beans with cheese for myself and ate some celery sticks.
5:34 a.m. - 2008-10-01
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
other diaries: |
