The heart surgeon called the other day and asked me to attend to a patient who had been transferred from the INTENSIVE care unit (ICU) with hyperglycemia. When I saw the patient’s name, I couldn’t help but be surprised. After surgery, he once suffered from multiple organ failure and septic shock, as well as ventricular fibrillation. It was not easy for him to persist.
As a doctor, when you know what’s happening to your patient, you first want to know whether the patient is alive or dead, and then you think about the cost of the patient. The doctor said he had spent hundreds of thousands of yuan, much of it borrowed. Because of years of illness, no savings and no wife, only to live with their daughter; Daughter’s income is not high, only two or three thousand yuan a month.
Knowing all this, I had mixed feelings. A sudden illness can really change things. In the ward, he lay emaciated on the bed, only the undulating chest and the few curves on the ecg monitor, telling the existence of life. He was wearing a blue-and-white striped hospital gown, and his body was filled with tubes, stomach tubes in his nasal cavity, the only way food could enter his body; The catheter in the bladder, which is the passage through which metabolites are excreted; A metal tube in the neck that had been a conduit for air exchange with the outside world; Deep vein incision in the neck, that’s where the drug enters the body.
All the doctors could do was keep his heart beating, but nothing could revive his failing faculties. Watching the bags of liquid pass through the tube into his body and out of the tube, his life, though it existed, had become an unbearable burden… I think that’s a worse failure than death. His daughter is a strong girl, silently bear all this, make me admire.
One day, I saw her in the hospital room, and I asked her, “What was it that kept you going? What was it that kept you going?” “It’s my love for dad,” she said, “and the love you doctors show me.” Her mother died when she was four, leaving her father and daughter alone. Because her father was busy with his work, he often had no time to take care of her, so she went home by herself after school every day. There was no one at home, so she sat on a stool at the door and waited for her father, no matter how late he came home, windy or rainy. Sometimes night came before her father came home, and everything became strange in the dark, and she cried with fear. Then the neighbors could not look at her, so they took her home and gave her food. To ease the hardship, her father remarried, to a woman, also on her second marriage, with a small boy. Who wants her stepmother not to like her, sometimes even told her to get out of the house. Ten years later, the marriage ended and the father-daughter relationship resumed. Later, she began to work, but her father was plagued by diabetes, hypertension, cerebral infarction, coronary heart disease and other diseases. As a result of his long illness, my father’s personality became more and more difficult, but these were not the most difficult. Two months ago, her father developed chest tightness and edema in his lower limbs. He usually climbed up to the fourth floor without stopping, but now he has to take several breaks to return home. Perhaps because he was afraid of being hospitalized, or because he was worried about money, his father refused to be hospitalized either alive or dead. Under the threat and inducement of her relatives, he agreed to come to the hospital to see a doctor. He was admitted to hospital because he was seriously ill. The next day after he was admitted, the doctor issued a critical notice.
The patient was immediately transferred to the CORONARY heart Disease ward (CCU) on the same day, and although his life was temporarily saved, the aneurysm and septal perforation had to be transferred to the thoracic surgery for the resection of the aneurysm, repair of the septal perforation and left ventricular angioplasty after his condition stabilized. When my daughter heard that It was Dean Chen, she felt relieved. On Oct. 8, 2021, after more than three hours, the surgery ended without a hitch. But for patients, surgery is only the first step to saving their lives. After coming down from the operating table, the ICU medical staff should closely monitor him and be ready for any unexpected situation. Because every heart surgery, is a soul-stirring battle of life and death, although the patient through this one, but does not represent “death” has let him go.
Three days after surgery, the patient developed septic shock, cardiogenic shock, acute renal failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, any of which could have been fatal. This time he might actually lose his life. The doctor talked to the patient’s daughter several times, telling her that in such a situation, there was a good chance of “losing both people and money.” But the daughter would rather spend all her money, borrow and lend, for a chance at her father’s survival. She said that without the support of the medical staff, it would have been difficult to make it this far. She is especially grateful to Director Song and Doctor Nie of the ICU for their devotion to her father. “They all know how important my father is to me and spare no effort to help me. Sometimes, when THERE was no hope, they would tell me to give up. I knew they were thinking of me.”
“I remember that day on October 20, When Dr. Nie was on duty, he felt something was wrong with him when he was talking to my father. He took a piece of paper and asked my father to write. My father wrote the words’ My father is dying ‘to me. When the visits were over, I didn’t want to go home at all, so I just sat in front of the ICU… Later, under the persuasion of relatives, I walked uneasily, just walked to the gate, Nie doctor called, said let me hurry back, my father suddenly malignant arrhythmia!” The patient’s daughter told me about the past. She told me that Dr. Nie was a very dedicated, kind and compassionate person. In fact, Dr. Nie should have left work long ago, but she had been working overtime to save her father. As time passes, the patient’s rescue effect is not ideal. At that time, she asked To see her father with Dr. Nie, but was refused! For the doctors were in a race against death, to take her father’s life away from him. “I was sitting on pins and needles outside, and I could not remember when Dr. Nie was busy and called me in to talk, and communicated the latest situation and the situation of the third intubation. Part of my father’s indicators were getting worse and worse, and I could do nothing.” The daughter of the patient told me that every time Nie doctor and Director Song talk to her, before going out will care to ask her whether she had a meal, also let her not sit at the door to blow, take good care of their own body, something they will call her in time, which always makes her cold heart more than a trace of warmth.
“From CCU to ICU, I have received numerous terminally ill notices. Did my dad really leave me this time? I really don’t want to go down there, and I don’t want to go home, because home is not called home without daddy.” “Once upon a time, my eyes were a tap with no switch on. I often cry when I eat alone, when I can’t sleep at night, when I walk, when I sit on the subway, and sometimes I even wake up in my dreams.” The patient’s daughter told me about her pain. I didn’t know how to comfort her, but I convinced her to trust us doctors, medicine and her father. I quietly accompany in her side, looking at her slightly haggard face and that experience wind and rain but still tough eyes, can not help but heat eyes.
Life is sometimes very fragile, and sometimes very strong. After another two weeks of efforts, the patient’s condition actually improved, and the vital signs gradually stabilized. We took him off the ventilator and transferred him to the general ward. With tears shining in her eyes, the patient’s daughter said to me, “When I look back on the journey I’ve made over the past few months, I feel like you are my friends and my family. My tears would not stop, not sad or happy tears, but the inability to repay and give up the doctor.” I told her that doctors are never meant to heal people in return. Since I put on this white dress, I have written the answer to everything that happened today; Since the first day of medical school, we raised our right hand together with a group of young blood, and made a vow of their life — health, life.
After more than ten days of treatment in the general ward, the patient slowly began to feed himself. After the gastric tube was removed, he no longer needed parenteral nutrition to sustain life. As his sputum ability improved, we removed the endotracheal tube, closed the neck incision, and he was finally able to talk! As the patient’s condition stabilized, another concern crept up on doctors’ minds: the cost. The doctors could not bear to see a weak woman living under great financial pressure, so we decided to apply for a relief fund for the patient to help her solve part of the cost. Thanks to her efforts, the bailout fund helped her pay for the rest of her insurance, easing her immediate need.
After a few days, the patient’s condition continued to develop in a good direction, although the treatment is still continuing, but he has been able to walk out of bed, go to the toilet by himself, can also eat by himself; After more than ten days of treatment, all the patient’s conditions have been stable, he in the daughter and relatives with the help, finally headed home! Watching the petite daughter supporting her weak father and the happy faces of the whole family, I couldn’t help but think of a word: the world is not always cold to you, but also gentle to you.
