Rhett’s Blog

Death

Today was a pretty slow day in the hospital. This whole week has been super slow, beside that exciting ER case we had a couple days ago. Little did I know September is the slowest month of the year here, so if you want to do a rotation here, don’t come in September. They said their busiest months are December, January. What I wanted to blog about was the news I got today. Word came back from the PICU in Belize City that the 4-month-old we transferred there on Wednesday had died. How sad I was to hear that news. We had done so much to keep that kid live and it was literally a miracle he had pulled through and was stable and breathing on his own when he left here. What’s even worse is when I found out how he died. I’m not sure what other underlying issues he had, besides the hypovolemic shock, but likely there was something else going on. Sometime that evening they had to put him on the ventilator. Dr. Sierra told me that sometime that evening the ventilator he was on had malfunctioned and quit working so he died. I couldn’t believe my ears, but that is the story we are hearing here. I’m not sure what could have happened. Was somebody not there with him? Did they not have alarms or monitors on him? Was there no back-up ventilator? Who knows. It’s a sad deal that shows some of the weaknesses of the health care system here. It’s never easy to hear news like this, especially after all that we had done to keep this baby alive, but it’s part of being a doctor. As a physician, you can reach some of the highest highs when you save a life, but also some of the lowest lows when a patient dies. Somebody has to bear that cross. I’m proud to be able to do it.