My first dead body
as i've mentionned in posts before, i'm a student nurse. I was lucky enough to not have to deal with a dead body until the very end of my first year.
It was a patinet who had been trasnferred to our ward just for TLC as he died. He had been poorly for a very long time with an endocrine disease wich involved escess production of bile.
Now, when a patient is dying, the are given a given a combination of morphine (pain control, diazepam (anti anxiety) and an anti emetic to stop the patient throwing up (this is important for later)
This patient had been with us for about two dies when he died and he chose to do it at the same time as another patient, so the nursing team were devided up as to who would lay out the bodies and who would stay on the ward. As they knew i had never laid out a body before they used it as an oppurtunity to teach me.
so we got everything ready, got on our gloves and aprons and went into the room.
It really didn't look as bad as i thought, he just looked like he was asleep. so we opened all the windows (bit of nursing superstition, lets the soul out) and set to washing him.
I was really comfortable washing him so i just stood by the head ready to assist with rolling him.
So his front got washed and we all assumed position to roll him onto his side to wash his bag and insert the body bag underneath him.
As i mentionned earler the patietn hadn't been able to throw up while he had been dying, so when we rolled the body towards me, the excess bile his body produced came out of his mouth and covered me. I've been thrown up on several times in my training, but this was horrible. This bile has been sitting inside of him for days and it reeked.
So needless to say i screamed and had to run out of the room and scrub myself clean.
I've yet to lay out another body, but if i do i'm not going near the head.
(minsh, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 13:17, Reply)