HEARING IS THE LAST SENSE PEOPLE LOSE

     Mr. Ames was a 64 year old man who’d come into the hospital for rectal cancer surgery. The surgeon elected to put Mr. Ames in the knee-chest position on a special operating table. He was face down with his butt in the air for hours due to the operation being more complicated than the surgeon had anticipated. As a result, he had nerve damage to his legs from the bent position and compression and also developed blood clots in the femoral arteries. This wasn’t discovered until he’d been in our intensive care unit for a few days and was awake enough to tell us he had no feeling in his legs. They’d also become very swollen leading us to suspect blood clots.

     Unfortunately, one complication led to another and the blood clots traveled to his lungs and brain. He ended up in a coma and on a respirator. He remained that way for three more months in the intensive care unit until it was finally determined by an electroencephalogram he was brain dead. As difficult as it was for them, his large loving family made the decision to remove him from life support.

     The day came and the respiratory therapist turned the machine off and removed the endotracheal tube from Mr. Ames’ mouth. But he didn’t die. He took a deep breath, then another. His wife and children looked at each other in amazement. Hope could be seen on their faces.

     He continued breathing on his own so we moved him from the noisy intensive care unit into the quieter cardiac care unit. He was placed in a private room. It had glass walls and a glass door so we could see inside, but it also had a curtain that could be pulled for privacy when his family visited. He was a ‘no code’, so if his heart stopped beating we weren’t going to resuscitate him. This went on for another month, then we began seeing signs that he was getting closer to death. His family made us promise we would call them when he was within hours of death so they could be by his side.

     One night when I was working in the cardiac care unit, I could tell by the changes to his breathing pattern, his heart rate increase, and blood pressure dropping that he was going to die on my shift. I called his family as promised and they said they would be in as soon as they could get there. It was the middle of the night and they’d been asleep. I watched the heart monitor anxiously, hoping he would remain alive until they got there.

     Forty five minutes passed and they still hadn’t arrived when suddenly, his heart stopped and the monitor showed a straight line. I jumped up and ran into the room. He’d stopped breathing as well. I put my hand on his shoulder and leaned close to his ear. The last sense to go is the sense of hearing. I spoke loudly into his right ear, “Don’t go yet, Mr. Ames. Your family is on their way in. They want to be here with you. Hold on a little longer.” I watched as he took a big, deep breath and started breathing again. I looked up at the heart monitor and his heart began beating again. I stayed there another ten minutes until his family burst through the door. When they entered the room and gathered around I said, “Okay, Mr. Ames, they’re all here with you now.”

     The man who was brain dead smiled a brilliant smile, stopped breathing, and his heart stopped beating. He had a beautiful, peaceful expression on his face. I pulled the curtains closed and pulled the door closed behind me as I left the room so his family could grieve privately.