Lost

I guess I was pretty naive going in to this whole thing thinking my first loss was going to be an older person (for some reason I always pictured it being a little old man) probably with some chronic heart failure or COPD who knew there time was coming and was surrounded by their family. It never crossed my mind that my first loss as a med student would be on my OB rotation. Now there is a newborn baby girl and her two year old sister that will grow up without their mommy. My heart is truly aching for this family. I have gone over her chart and all my interactions with her multiple times but it doesn't change the fact that she is gone. It isn't a patient scenario anymore, I don't just get to walk away at the end of the day and brush it off because it was some made up case. This was my patient and though she showed no signs of there being anything wrong with her, all labs were clear, her BP had normalized, and her imaging came back negative it doesn't make this nagging feeling going away.

I keep trying to tell myself that we did everything we could. The CT we ordered was extra because my attending had a hunch that something wasn't right. So how do you explain it to her family? How do you look her husband in the eyes and tell him that he is going to have to raise these little girls on his own?

It seemed like a simple case. Open and shut. Maybe that is why this is so hard to digest. I have been feeling ridiculously nauseated since coming back from the hospital this afternoon. I almost broke down and cried in the grocery store. Maybe I will get used to losing patients eventually but I sure hope not. I don't want this to be something I am used to. I like people alive and healthy and able to play with their 2 year old daughters and snuggle their newborns. But unfortunately I have to look at this as a learning opportunity and vow to not let it happen to the next one (even though there was nothing really we could do which sucks even more).