Saturday, October 4, 2008

Transplant Hell

I hear a call on the overhead paging system requesting all available hands to help with a turn in room 4. My hands are available, so I go. I join two other nurses and a tech at Mr. Jones’ bedside. I can see right away it is another liver transplant gone bad. We see quite a lot of them.

If you go to the patient information websites for liver transplant programs and click on “waking up in the ICU” you generally find something like, “you may have some pain from your incision, but your nurse will take care of that.” The same site will tell you that 80% of patients survive for more than 5 years. That means that 20% do not; but try to find information about what happens to that 20% and you won’t find anything. So, here goes.

Mr. Jones was deranged and panicked from toxins (chiefly ammonia) that had built up in his blood due to liver failure and organ rejection. Had he not had a plastic breathing tube in his airway, he would probably still not have been able to speak more that a word or two and groan. As we go to turn him, he resists everything we do. His bed is full of blood, stool and bodily fluids. We need to clean him up and change his sheets.

He is in four point restraints – tied at the ankles and wrists with cloth straps that stop him from trying to get out of bed (he would fall) and from pulling out his breathing tube or his various drains and lines. As we undo the restraints to turn him, Mr. Jones claws at us. He makes a fist and tries to hit us. He tries to kick us. As soon as he gets slack, he tries to grab his breathing tube. We are used to this type of behavior. We hold the cloth straps tightly where they meet his wrists, “Please don’t do that Mr. Jones.” We need four people for this turn. A nurse can get in a lot of trouble for “letting” a patient pull out their breathing tube. Self extubation is an urgent emergency that requires the attention of multiple physicians and activation of the unit’s staff assist system. Suddenly, the room will be filled with 20 pumped up nurses and doctors like in a code and they will all demand “Why wasn’t this patient restrained!?” which is not to say that there is not understanding for what can happen from time to time. The patient also is at risk for brain damage from hypoxia etc. We do not give Mr. Jones any leeway. He is not going to pull that tube.

He is too weak to be dangerous to us, but he is full of Hep C and other nasty diseases, and even a scratch would be worrisome. His obviously sincere efforts hurt us do not evoke compassion. With his pale skin, drawn face and angry eyes, he fits the mold of the mean drunk. One can easily imagine him turning this violence on his lovers. My mind wanders to the moment he heard that a liver was available. He must have been so happy. All that waiting for some poor guy to drop dead was finally over. Well congratulations Mr. Jones – you got your liver.

We, his enemies, have him pulled up on his side and are wiping the liquid stool from his paper thin, yellow skin. He is full of fluid. His skin is tight and painful. Any puncture site (and he will have a few) oozes clear yellow fluid (if not blood) and does not stop. His belly is distended to perhaps 10 times its normal size. His scrotum has swollen to the size of a cantaloupe and it is raw and bleeding. He had expected to be home watching TV by now.

I am thinking about writing this. I test my thoughts, “Do you think he knew he could end up like this?” “I do not think any of them have any idea of it.,” confirms Terry, the charge nurse. Terry has been a nurse on this same unit for more than 10 years. She likes my straight talking and reciprocates with her own. Unbeknownst to me she has already put in for a transfer to another service. Many of the senior staff have already left over a conflict with the new manager. Terry was a holdout, but she is now joining the exodus.

The tech nods in agreement. The other nurse in the room is younger and less experienced. She makes a sour face and avoids eye contact. Perhaps she is thinking about the heroic transplant surgeons or the miracles of modern medicine. My perspective of the scene before us is not one she has any intention of embracing. She would rather I keep it to myself, but she is clearly in the minority so she does not say anything and keeps busy cleaning.

To be continued.

3 comments:

officesavings said...

I remember my very first clinicals in school were on the liver and kidney transplant floor. What you describe brings back memories of this. I had never known that a person could be so yellow. Or that someone with ascites could have four litres of fluid drained from their abdomen.

Your story says a lot. This is truly not what we are conditioned to believe when we think of transplants.

Unknown said...

kind of off topic, but i thought you would find this interesting. . . oh, and i really like your blog.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/02/ep.evan.handler.patient.advocate/index.html

Leo Levy said...

The CNN article is interesting, but I think a bit too extreme. I agree that patients should be cautious and alert, but they should also not understimate the value of the good will of those who are caring for them. Nurses and doctors are not the patients enemy and treating them as such is not favorable for the patients outcome. A positive, cooperative approach goes a lot farther towards improving care than a negative one. There are definetly times when patients should stand their ground and resist being intimidated, but they would not be in the hospital in the first place if they did not need their nurses. Why be mean?