I knew it would happen sooner or later. Everyone eventually has a patient die. I'm sure other patients of mine had died before, but this is the first one I knew about. She had serious emphysema. You get that from smoking.
Anyways, she came in for an exacerbation of her emphysema. She could hardly breathe. And she was only 50 years old. We gave her breathing treatments. A chest X-ray suggested pneumonia. That would explain why she suddenly had trouble breathing. We treated her with antibiotics. She got better for a while.
The trouble with antibiotics is this: They wipe out ALL bacteria. This leaves room for bad ones to grow in the place of good ones. We all have C. difficile in our colons, but when you wipe out all of your normal bacteria, C. difficile can overrun everything. And the result is horrible diarrhea. Most people get over it.
But in some peple, this diarrhea progresses to something worse. She developed "Toxic Megacolon," where the gut simply is overwhealmed with the bacteria and ceases to function. This bacteria got into her bloodstream. The only option was to surgically remove part of her colon. However, she was in such bad shape that her mortality from this procedure was 100%. And without the procedure, it was 100%. There was nothing we could do, except let her die. And that is what she did, after a few hours.
I plan on going to the autopsy tomorrow. It seems right to see everything through till the last steps. The permanence of it all is stifling. From joking about her kids just a few days ago.... to this. I hope she did not suffer too much through it all.
Anyways, she came in for an exacerbation of her emphysema. She could hardly breathe. And she was only 50 years old. We gave her breathing treatments. A chest X-ray suggested pneumonia. That would explain why she suddenly had trouble breathing. We treated her with antibiotics. She got better for a while.
The trouble with antibiotics is this: They wipe out ALL bacteria. This leaves room for bad ones to grow in the place of good ones. We all have C. difficile in our colons, but when you wipe out all of your normal bacteria, C. difficile can overrun everything. And the result is horrible diarrhea. Most people get over it.
But in some peple, this diarrhea progresses to something worse. She developed "Toxic Megacolon," where the gut simply is overwhealmed with the bacteria and ceases to function. This bacteria got into her bloodstream. The only option was to surgically remove part of her colon. However, she was in such bad shape that her mortality from this procedure was 100%. And without the procedure, it was 100%. There was nothing we could do, except let her die. And that is what she did, after a few hours.
I plan on going to the autopsy tomorrow. It seems right to see everything through till the last steps. The permanence of it all is stifling. From joking about her kids just a few days ago.... to this. I hope she did not suffer too much through it all.
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