Bad Outcome II

This is a continuation of the prior post. Once the medical questions shake out, the weightier issues come to bear. How does one emotionally deal with an unexpected death of a pediatric patient? It's absolutely devastating. Immediately, all I could feel was shock. It was difficult to think, difficult to process anything. And still, I was on call; I was finishing other cases, returning phone calls for the pediatric pain service. I felt very removed, doing things by rote, aware but not engaged. During the first few days, many people came to talk to me about the experience, and sometimes I wanted to discuss it, and sometimes I didn't. It very much became a Thing, and I wasn't sure I wanted it to be a Thing. It dragged on me. Work was no longer fun; my motivation was gone. I even thought about taking time off, which some attendings felt perfectly reasonable. It took weeks for my heart to stop racing, for things to settle down, for me to realize death is an extremely rare occurrence, for my emotions to heal. Even now, I think about the case from time to time, and I'm not sure how long it will take to fully achieve closure.

What I feel pales in comparison to the grief of the parents. They had brought in their most precious possession, their healthy child, and entrusted care to us, and we caused an irreparable injury. I cannot imagine how they feel now, how much they regret bringing her to the hospital, how it aches when they come home to an empty room, how they tell their other children, family, friends, school, church what happened. I am sorry this happened. Nothing we do can make it right again.