There is one thing in my job that I have already experienced many times – and yet it does not lose any of its fascination for me: When one of our patients is dying in the intensive care unit and relatives from further away travel to get away from them To be able to say goodbye, it often happens that the patient struggles. Four, five or even six hours, as long as it takes for the relatives to arrive. And only half an hour after their arrival, often enough after an even shorter time, he dies – it is as if the patient wanted to wait until his loved ones were standing by the bed. Only then does he let go of life.
Sometimes, however, the complete opposite happens: Here the relatives are already sitting at the bedside of the dying person, they accompany him hour after hour, and under no circumstances do they want him to die alone. At some point, however, they leave the room, drive home quickly to take a shower or get a coffee in the cafeteria. There are always only short interruptions in terminal care. But it is precisely at this time that death occurs. It seems that the patient just wanted to die alone and waited for the right moment to do so.
In times of Corona, dying works a little differently: More of our patients and, above all, more younger ones than it was common in us before the pandemic. In the case of the dying, there is also an exception to the currently applicable ban on visits. Then a relative can be there if their corona test is negative. But even before Corona, only a very small group of relatives was usually allowed to come, our rooms are simply too small for more. Nevertheless, it has always been the case that many of our patients die, many compared to those in the normal ward.
Julia Rettenberger works as an intensive care specialist in the Ebersberg district clinic.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Probably no one wishes to die in the hospital. But it still happens very often: According to the Federal health reporting 427 199 people died in German clinics in 2019. That’s 45 percent – because there was that all in all Federal Statistical Office according to 939 520 dead. Almost every second person who dies does so in the hospital.
The death of the patient goes hand in hand with the grief of the relatives. Most of the time we do this in silence. Some of the relatives cry too, but usually quietly and in the private setting that we create for them on the ward. But there are other cases as well. I remember one who had a mother who died – the mother, the lynchpin of the big family that kept everything together. The moment the zero line appeared on the monitor, the relatives present broke. Two of them collapsed so much in their grief that we had to take care of them.
Mourning must be understood and lived as a separate emotional act. There are cultural differences in grieving, but also individual ones. We accept any shape on our ward.
Julia Rettenberger is an intensive care nurse. In this column, the 28-year-old tells every week about her work at the district clinic in Ebersberg. The collected texts can be found under sueddeutsche.de/thema/Auf_Station.