My First Death

When we started to work at the clinics this week, it was a bit of a mess in the beginning. We were split up
into two groups at two separate clinics so on Monday morning we ventured off to our respective locations
. My group took a taxi on to this highway and traveled up this mountain but once we got there, we found
out that we had given the driver the wrong address. And so the trek across the mountain began again in
order to arrive at the correct location. We thought all was fine but when we arrived, it seemed strangely
empty at the clinic. Upon going inside and talking to the nurses working there, we found out that the
doctors who were supposed to receive us that day were currently on strike. We called the CFHI
directors and made our way back to the language school. The day wasn’t a total bust though since we
ended up volunteering at a place where underprivileged children got their education and it actually was
really nice.

The next day we all got repositioned at one of the major hospitals in Oaxaca but again, it was quite messy.
None of the doctors seemed to be expecting us and so many of us ended up sitting around doing nothing
for the majority of the four hours that we were there for. However, as the week went on and the doctors
were more prepared to let us shadow, we got to see lots of cool things. I ended up loving shadowing this
nurse and doctor in the ER. Honestly, I was a little scared to shadow there since I thought I was going to
witness gory injuries such as car accidents. There were a few but they weren’t as gory as I had previously
thought they were going to be. Below is a picture of the MCPHS group after a day shadowing at the
hospital.

Some of the things that we witnessed were surgeries, abortions, the cancer wing, as well as jaundice. I saw
my first case of jaundice while I was here and I was in awe at seeing it in person.

But today was different in the ER. It was a quiet morning since today was Mother’s Day in Mexico so there
weren’t a lot of patients; even a lot of the doctors didn’t show up to work. The patient I saw with jaundice
the other days was the main focus of today. Me and some other students followed the nurse to go perform
an ECG on him but as we were there, I realized something was really wrong. My peer pointed out that his
chest wasn’t moving up and down at all and when I glanced up at the heart monitor, all of his numbers read
a solid 0. As the ECG printed out from the machine, it looked different than the other ones that we had
performed for other patients. Instead of seeing undulations in his readings, all of the graphs came out to be
flat lines.

I wasn’t sure what was happening but we disconnected the machine and followed the doctor. He went out
into the hallway and called in a small lady with a short haircut. As he spoke to her, I watched her face and
felt my heart breaking with her. I didn’t understand the words that the doctor was telling her but as her lip
quivered and tears streamed down her face, I knew what he had said. Her husband was dead.

Before this, I had never even come close to witnessing a conversation like this. The last time I had been
near a dead body was at my friend’s grandpa’s funeral, and even then it hadn’t hit home like this had. To
actually see a patient who had been alive the day before and come in the next day to find out that he was
dead was surreal. And the conversation with the wife after the fact was more heartbreaking to watch than I
had anticipated. I felt my own eyes watering as I watched her walk into the room to say her goodbyes to
her husband. Later on in the day when I was writing some paperwork that the nurse had requested me and
my friends to do, I saw a team roll out of the ER wing with a body bag in tow and knew that it was the
patient. Seeing the cart disappear with him on it gave the moment a sense of finality and I wasn’t sure how
I was feeling. Many doctors say that it doesn’t get easier to have this conversation, and I now I believe
them.