A Sad End

So, one of the great things about ID is that you can cure people. Not always, not with HIV or Hepatitis C, but for most, run-of-the-mill infections, you can cure people.

Not so last week.

We had a fantastic lady with a raging pancreatitis. The worst I had ever seen. We see a lot of pancreatitis, and most people do fine. In fact, we get kind of cavalier about it. "Oh, it's just pancreatitis." Not this time.

Our poor lady got super sick, then seemed to rebound. Then, a turn for the worse. But, she popped back! - not quite as good as the peak before, but she looked ok. Then, she tumbled again, farther down than before. A little blip back up, but then down down down.

We kept searching for abscesses, more infections, etc. We had her on excellent coverage for the bacteria we knew about; the rest was up to her body to make a come back.

It wasn't meant to be.

Her family decided that she'd had fought enough, and they elected to make her comfort care only. So, the ICU team made her comfortable, and she died not long after she was extubated.

We were really pulling for her, so our team took it pretty hard. She was such a nice, nice lady, too. I'll miss seeing her everyday.