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My secret guilt !
Topic Started: 26 Feb 2009, 04:45 PM (80 Views)
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For these many years I have harboured and nurtured an increasing and overwhelming feeling of guilt.
I have this afternoon been discussing with an educated and intelligent sweet , person , the tension that I feel about the fact that I have sinned and can find no reason or excuse for my actions those many years ago .
I feel that to disclose my actions and sound out how other people feel about what I did might help to ease the anguish of my soul and therefore I seek to use you to discuss my actions and sit in judgement if you like and to say what I did was so terribly wrong.
I existed in the twilight world of `bed sit land` of SW London in the early seventies when my marriage folded and I virtually lost the will to live. My weight dropped away to eleven and a half stone from over 14stones. I worked in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in Balham that now no longer exists.
I was on night duty and I reported to the Night Sister who was an exceptionally hard looking , poe faced bitch . I was detailed to look after a patient on ventilator , who had an IV drip and a catheter who had `mysteriously` fallen down the concrete celler steps in his house and suffered brain damage as a result.
His blonde, pretty wife had been in to visit on the arm of a coloured gentleman and the patients many relatives came and the Neurologist from the Atkinson Morley Hospital in SW London saw them all and explained that the patient was `Brain Dead`. He had carried out exhaustive tests on the patient and there was no sign of brain activity whatsoever and he sought permission to turn off the `Life Support `machine and allow the patient to die a natural and dignified death . Amazingly , according to the day Sister there was an immediate howling and wailing from the relatives who were predominately catholic to the contrary .
`No` - they categorically said almost in unison , pointing to the monitor `There is the tracing of his heartbeat and there in the bag is the urine that he has passed and we can see that he is breathing. No - he is alive.` and they refused to have the life support machine turned off.
I took up my position at the foot of the poor chaps bed and did the observations and the `poe faced` sister came up to me and stuck her thumb in my back and said `I want him out of here by morning.`
`Sorry Sister` I replied `I don`t know how you mean - you want him out of here ?`
`Haven`t you got someone like this `out` before.` she asked. ` I`ve looked after them.` I replied.
`He is dead.` she informed me. `He has no brain function and he is only kept alive mechanically. He is breathing because the machine is doing it for him. He is peeing because he is having IV fluids and has a catheter in. What you see on the monitor is only an electrical impulse . He is cold because his temperature control is dead He is `dead` Now let me show you.` and she moved round to the ventilator. She took the inlet tube to the ET tube and disconnected it and left it disconnected until the heart rate slowed on the monitor and then reconnected it and the heart rate gradually increased again. `You do that every hour or so. This patient is costing the NHS an awful lot of money to keep alive mechanically when he is in actual fact Dead.` The Sister said.
I did as she instructed me and before midnight the heart did not pick up again and I reported no cardiac activity on the monitor and the relatives were informed.
How do you find me?
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BLOWHARD
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Wow Bunky, that's a heavy weight to carry. Just knowing about it and not talking must have been hard. I'm sure any God, creator or higher power worth believing in would absolve you from fault. For me personally, I'd never hold that against you and probably take the approach that those circumstances are part of the job, life has to go on, even if it's cold and callus life. I think moral dilemmas like this must go along with jobs in the any care industry.
The important part is you though. What you did must have been the right thing at the time. If you had it all to relive you might choose differently. But how do you find yourself?
I'm a firm believer that right or wrong, good or bad, what's done is done. Things happen as they are supposed to happen. Regret is one thing, learning from your experiences is most important, but you can't beat yourself up to the point that your life isn't worth living.
Not that it makes a lot of difference in the grand scheme of things, but you're ok by me Bunky :)

An aside, I think the modern human idea to stay alive, no matter what, even if you're miserable, or in pain, or aren't even there anymore seems stupid to me. No matter your beliefs, death is the end event and serves a purpose. It may sound silly but I find clinging to life a bit morbid.
Fast and bulbous!
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Dolphin
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Hello Bunky.
ive read your post and I dont think in any way that you should have any bad feelings towards these experiences that you had to endure as this type of thing happens from time to time and is an Ocupational Hazard and goes with the job as I am sure that the Emergency Services see this type of thing every day in the course of their duties.

There was a recent case were a woman was kept on a life support machine for a period of 17 years and she was of the Catholic Religion and her closest relations wouldnt have the machine switched off untill common sence prevailed.

But when I was at the age of 15 I had a serious road accident and was in a Coma for 3 months with a Compound Fractured Pelvis and fractured femur and my right leg bone was sticking through my leg and lay in Traction for nearly 6 months with weights and pullies and had a hospital stay of 18 months.


I know that there are some sad cases these days of peoples suffurings but I also think that one must seperate these things from your personal life as much as one can do regardless to the circunstances connected to them.

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Deleted User
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I looked after someone like you Dolphin , as a student general nurse at Worksop Victoria Hospital
in the `50`s.
The lad was a motorcyclist and he had hit a pile of grit and sand that had been left at the side of the road.
He was in his teens and was riding a Triumph 650ccs Thunderbird and the sand and grit had been carelessly off loaded with some of it trailing onto the side of the road and he had hit it at speed and suffered terrible injuries with , as I remember , fractured pelvis and bilateral fractured femurs and fractured collar bone and skull. He lay in coma for many weeks packed in ice with both legs in Thomas` splints . He was not expected to live but he grittily fought to survive and he doggedly regained conciousness and started to pull through after many months and his survival was mentioned in the national newspapers.
He was now a midget as his legs had shortened and his speech and intelligence were affected .
I wondered many times whether he would have been better served had he been taken and succumbed to his massive injuries , but I suppose you have to strive to preserve every life .
I am glad that the farmer who I worked for on my days off from the hospital who was admitted with massive facial injuries due to a shot gun `accident` expired after his operation to `make him a face `.
He had 212 catgut sutures inserted and then died as they got him back to the ward. Thank God.
I never recognised him on the theatre table as I gazed down on a `pulpy mass` which was all that remained of his face. Thankyou God for taking this kind and generous farmer for depriving him of a life of misery and pain.
You have reassured me with regard to my actions in the London hospital by ending the existence of a person who was `clinically ` dead and kept `alive` mechanically. I feel relieved by your comments.
Many thanks.
Cliff/Bunky









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Cajunbug
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Bunky I am happy that you have come to that conclusion as I don't see that you are guilty of any wrong doing. Keeping someone on machines who is dead and with no hope of recovery just does not make sense to me.
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