Been busy, Also been doing a lot of thinking.

So now back on placement. Its been only a week, and on my second day (Tuesday) I stopped a patient from dying. I stopped her from going into a respiratory arrest. I gave her a chance to say goodbye to her family and for her daughetr to hold her hand and be with her mum. I spent most of Wednesday reading about expected death and unexpected death, how to cope as a nurse and how to talk to families.

The woman in question is dying. She has decided that she does not want any more interventions to assist her with breathing. Yesterday I arrived on ward and she was still alive. I was happy at this. I told the woman I was glad to see her looking up and well, she smiled at me, told me that I was an angel for helping her on Tuesday as she got to wait for her daughter. Then she calmly told me she wants to die. We had a talk about death and dying. She's going home this week to die. Possibly. She might be readmitted to my ward.

This is whats prompted my thinking. Am I a good person? The psychoanalysis ran away a wee bit here and I ended up going "down the rabbit hole" as it were but at the root of it all I wondered am I a good person? Do I always do the right thing, or do I do the thing that makes me feel comforted in the face of another persons fear of death and pain? Do I absorb or react to thier fear?

A lot of this is to do with the way that this woman deteriorated on Tuesday and the way I "saved" her (I still feel stupid typing that), but I wonder if its linked to me trying to validate myself. Did I save her because I could, did I help her because it was the right thing to do as a person, as a nurse, or, did I do it to help myself?

This might not make a lot of sense, I might go back and edit it later and expand on some points, but I'm preparing for a 4 hour drive today and the old brain is a wee bit fuzzy, I'm also teasing out the salient points and trying to wrestle with emotional ones.

Later.

Also - just as a small note - see when a friends family member dies, could someone tell me? Cheers. It would be nice to know.