ICU

we had a pt that was in the ICU this week. 40yo hispanic women who had breast cancer. she had treatment in Mexico along with a mastectomy but nothing helped, the cancer spread and when she got to us, she was on a respirator and not conscious. if you looked at her chest, her cancer had come out from her breast to her skin and was spreading all over her skin. it was a very sad sight. she had scar tissue from the surgery as well and the whole sight was very shocking.

i happened to be in the same area when the pulmonologist was reviewing her CXR and it was breathtaking. i had never seen such a dense x ray of consolidations. she explained that everything in her lungs was lymphatically spread cancer and that this women was going to die in a matter of hours or days. 

her family was notified of all the findings and they decided to take her off the ventilator. there were 20-30 people in the ICU that day. they asked the family to leave and the nurses gave the patient morphine then took her off the ventilator. her vitals stayed up and the family was invited back into the room. about 3 hours later the patients stopped breathing on her own and died. i was not there at the time but did come back downstairs as the family was visiting and paying their respects. they stayed for a good amount of time after and then it was quite again in the ICU. she was only 40 years old.