I remember my first death. He was my patient, a 59 year old who suffered an episode of asphyxiation. His story was tragic, a reminder of the frailty of human life. After choking on a food bolus at home, he had called 911.
Unfortunately, he suffered a prolonged cardiac arrest that resulted in irreversible brain damage. He spent two weeks in the intensive care unit in hopes of a recovery, but the outcome was not positive. When I went to see him, tubes were coming out of every orifice in his body. He was intubated and unable to be weaned from the ventilator to breathe on his own. His body had become progressively more swollen by the day, and now his face was barely recognizable.
Pictures of a younger, healthier man lay perched at his bedside, and every day that I went in to examine him, I made it a point to take a moment to appreciate the vitality that these pictures represented. As time went on, it was determined that there was no sign of cortical function and that the machine was still doing most of the breathing for him. In essence, he was brain dead. After several family meetings to determine goals of care, we decided to put him through as little pain as possible. He was extubated, and his death came slowly and gradually over the next several days.
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