#1
Putting multiple people in body bags each shift one weekend as a Covid nurse and then having my own family tell me Covid wasn’t real in the days after.
Image credits: sarah
#2
Carrying a stillborn infant to the morgue in my arms so that her mother did not have to see her on the cold morgue cart. This was against policy, it was night shift and I didn’t care. The look on her face and the pain in her voice asking me to carry her will stay with me forever.
#3
A mother holding her stillborn said “I wish I could sit here and stare at her until we both turn into dust.”
Image credits: Kelly
It’s not uncommon to dissociate or numb feelings when going through traumatic or stressful events. Even though it might provide temporary relief, coping this way with difficult emotions can have an unwanted, long-lasting impact.
Prolonged emotional numbness can lead to an inability to respond to positive situations and relationships, too. They appear detached and unfeeling and lack energy. Essentially, a person can’t feel anything anymore.
#4
Having a cancer patient's wife sob in my arms after her husband told the Dr he was tired of fighting and wanted to go home on hospice, sit on the porch, listen to the birds, and drink coffee with his wife.
Image credits: lala 🦕
#5
Praying with an older couple before surgery to go well, she didn’t make it. Watching him leave alone with his cane and hat in hand.
#6
Sane exam on a 8-month-old baby…I never went home and cried so much. I held my daughter when I got home.
Image credits: mintykxo
However, without the help of professional guidance, emotional numbing can be hard to overcome. Mental health professionals provide various treatments that can help with accepting the inner feelings and focusing one’s attention on living a meaningful life.
That said, there are several lifestyle changes that doctors or therapists can recommend to help relieve the symptoms of emotional numbness.
#7
Having to tell my patient we had no ventilators left during Covid so he really had to be strong and focus on his breathing all night just to stay alive. He did.
Image credits: allililin
#8
Doing post mortem care on a young mom while her toddler was asleep in the cot set up beside the bed.
Image credits: Julia
#9
I sat with a postpartum mom after she told me she was planning on shooting herself that night. I sat with her while she sobbed and we admitted her that day. I think about her and what would’ve happened if she hadn’t spoken up that day. I held her and we cried together.
The first one is learning to reach out to your friends and family for support when you need it. Trusted persons in your life can provide a safe space to express your emotions. Another great thing to do is to focus on improving your physical health. Getting plenty of exercise and rest is important, as it makes your body more equipped to face probable stressors.
#10
Doing compressions on a man still in his wedding tuxedo while his brand new wife stood outside the room still in her dress. They were t-boned leaving their wedding, he didn’t make it.
Image credits: Lisa
#11
The amount of children and young people that die because they have no health insurance while we keep people in nursing homes that have no mind body or soul left.
#12
Holding a patient by his gait belt with another nurse so he could dance with his wife one last time. He passed that night. Her cries haunt me.
Image credits: elloitschristin
Minimizing stress is an additional coping strategy that can help minimize emotional numbness. This means avoiding overcrowded schedules and instead finding time to do things you enjoy. Lastly, relaxing breathing and physical exercises can increase emotional strength and to manage stressful experiences, minimizing the need to resort to emotional numbing.
#13
Sitting with a 5 yo who was there for a su*cide attempt and his mom just dropped him off and gave his info and left. He than ran out the ER into oncoming traffic and when I caught him, he grabbed onto me and said “I just want my mommy to love me”.
#14
During an honor walk hearing the scream of a mother and watching her fall to her knees as her teenage son was being wheeled down to the OR to be an organ donor.
Image credits: caradena
#15
Doing compressions on someone my age who was assaulted beyond the point of recognition by her ab**er. Haven’t really been the same since that call.
Image credits: jewelsredman
#16
The scream of a father finding out his 3yo son was ran over and didn’t make it…
Image credits: laurenh____
#17
Doing CPR on two babies who where siblings.. while the shooter was alive and a few rooms down.. he lived. They didn’t.
Image credits: Cristal Floran
#18
SANE exam on a newborn. I left.
Image credits: GreatBarrierQueef
#19
When an old lady was sick and i hugged her and she started crying and said all she wants is her mommy.
#20
Hearing the screams of a mom bc her dad gave her daughter a std .. she was 6.. having to hold a mom while she watched her son almost die in her arms due to gun violence .. I can keep going …
Image credits: 5 ⭐️
#21
18 yr old, engaged, with brain cancer signing on to hospice. Our chaplain married her and her fiance after she held on for 4 days. She passed right after.
Image credits: Cheyenne Sejour
#22
Being a nurse in ICU. Caring for a 25 yo woman who got H1N1 and was on life support for over a month. Pressors, vent, the whole 9. Family was never there but wouldn’t take her off life support. I took her sock off and her toes fell off into my hand. She was rotting. Had to call ethics committee.
Image credits: Stefsmith42
#23
Losing my 8 week old daughter and my boss calling me the next day asking when I'd be returning to work, on the pediatric floor…
Image credits: Cassie
#24
Seeing a man in his 80s being dropped off (old folks home) and his daughter saying she'd pick him up later for his grandbaby's soccer game. He sat by a windows waiting everyday. They never even came to get his belongings when he passed.
Image credits: 🦇 biz 🎃 nastyyy 🕷
#25
Seeing a man in his 30s watch outside the glass door as his wife passed away during COVID days after she birthed their baby who also didn’t make it.
Image credits: Lexie
#26
My pedi psych patient asking me “Is this what it’s like to have a mom?” When I cut his food up for him.
Image credits: Syd
#27
Trying to draw blood an 8 month old neglected baby that weighed the same as my baby at 2 months. (11lbs, he couldn’t even hold up his head).
#28
Post mortem SANE exam on a 16 yo.
Image credits: Katie b
#29
The screams of a mom who came in expecting to deliver a healthy baby and found out it was stillborn.
Image credits: Abi
#30
My patient asked me for a pen and paper to make his wife a Valentine’s day card. He made the card and then coded that night.
Image credits: Sam
#31
Compressions on a man who was vomiting his own stool who told me right before he coded to tell his family to sell his clothes for rent money that month.
#32
Caring for a baby in the same NICU bed my daughter died in. They had the same diagnosis. The baby’s last name was my daughter’s first name.
#33
Hearing a grown man cry and scream as he’s getting brought down to surgery saying that all he wants is his babies back after getting into a car accident and was the only one that survived.
#34
Doing compressions on a 3 weeks old baby and holding them until the coroner arrived since no family was allowed back due to suspected neglect/abuse.
#35
I had a patient that wasn’t doing great after a stroke but he said he was saving up his strength to watch his granddaughters wedding on zoom… he had so much energy and then an hour before the wedding he died and I sobbed so hard.
Image credits: carissascosmos
#36
I discharged a patient with no previous psych hx who came in for anxiety. No SI/HI/AVH just really bad trauma but good support system. Family had no concerns. She k**led herself the next morning. I will live with the guilt of not being able to identify someone who truly needed saved for the rest of my life.
#37
I had a patient my age (23) with severe Chron’s disease in the ICU after surgery. He started bleeding more than 1L through the drainage. Called the emergency surgeons and while they arrived I held his hand while he told me “I’m very scared”. He was extremely pale and shaking. I went home after that shift, couldn’t sleep thinking about it, and the next day my coworker said “take a look at him”. He was intubated and sedated. He made it, and after a few days he woke up and thanked me for everything.
#38
Being an oncology nurse. That’s it, that’s all.
Image credits: Brishaunna Lewis
#39
Holding the hand of a 16y.o being put to sleep for surgery to take out his voice box(cancer) and his last words being “please make sure I wake up.”
Image credits: Michaela
#40
I had a 19 y/o patient that got in a car accident. He’s brain dead but his parents have been keeping him ventilated for almost 2 years now.
Image credits: Amber
#41
The fire department holding a motorcyclists brain in his head with a towel while I checked all over the patient for a pulse, watching his dead eyes hoping he blinks. Looking for maybe a bubble in the blood pouring out of his mouth. Attempting CPR and feeling every bone crush that I had to look away. Standing up covered in blood, blood soaked through my pants, socks, shirt. And then had to work the rest of my shift covered in his blood. I still see his eyes clear as day in my mind. I would count compressions in my head for months over and over, reminding myself I did them at the right pace. This all happened on a major highway while drivers video recorded me yelling at a lifeless man to blink. We covered him with a sheet, and had to go to the next call. I wish people saw EMS from our point of view. We don’t have doctors on scene. There’s two of us. We call the shots. And we pray to god the shots are correct. That’s all. Traumatic as hell.
#42
i work in a pharmacy and watching elders have to leave a medication they need because it’s $2k+ makes me feel the lump in my throat everytime.
#43
A boy with a GSW due to being caught in a cross fire, heading to his high school graduation- grabbed my arm and told me, “please don’t let me die.” He had passed shortly after..
#44
Little baby not even 1. Back in forth between parents losing custody. Chronically sick w/ heart condition. Picked that baby up she didn’t want to let me go. She just needed to be held. I think about her everyday I hope she is loved.
#45
I’m a paramedic. It was watching my partner die.
#46
CNA for 7 years, ED RN for 2, thought i had been numb…i didn’t know what numb was until i drove up on my little brothers wreck and just screaming at everyone for not doing anything…while he had a fence post through his heart.
#47
Coding my best friend while i was on shift in the ED. He died.
#48
Holding an iPad for a family to say goodbye during the peak of Covid. That’s when I knew this career was changed forever.
#49
Taking care of a premature baby the day he was born doing cute footprints for his family. Only less than a month later doing compressions on him and having to do footprints again after he passed.
#50
I sat with a patient who told me “I don’t know if my baby is my dad's or step dad's.”
#51
A 10 week old with SDH, SAH, terrible case of shaken baby syndrome, apparently was found in between the wall and his crib and was severely malnourished.
#52
A missing female patient dumped on the side of the road after days of the unthinkable. She was badly injured and had been Sa’d and given unk substances. She was altered and thought I was her best friend. Kept eye contact with me the entire ride. Pleaded me to help her. She screamed for me as I left her in the trauma room. Thought her bff was ditching her. I still wish I could’ve stayed for her.
#53
Having a pediatric cancer patient pass away from the secondary cancer she got from the radiation they used to cure her initial cancer. She was 14.
#54
As a healthcare worker of 16 years nothing has numbed me more than coming home after a 12 hour shift and finding my dad had passed and was cold.
#55
We had called the pt’s parents to let them know if they wanted to say goodbye they needed to come to the hospital & his parents missed him by 5 minutes.
#56
Teaching a mom how to dry up her milk supply after delivering her baby stillborn. Broke me.
#57
A mother bringing in her baby that had been gone for a few days already, she was on the influence when she came and feel to her knees asking someone to do CPR but the baby was cold and presumed over 3 days gone :(
#58
Newlyweds with the wife who just got diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer. Husband refused to sleep the entire 3 nights in the ICU with us having to walk it through with him about hospice.
#59
I once saw a NICU nurse rocking a dead baby back and forth in her arms as if it were alive. Did that all the way to the morgue.
#60
Watching a teen mom give birth and not wanting to hold or see the baby but instead asked when can she go back to school. I held her baby in my hands and cried. I told the baby that she was loved and that I loved her. My daughter was 6 months at that time.
#61
Husband and wife were on my unit both with Covid. I helped them FaceTime their kids for them and each other not knowing if both or either would make it. They never got to say goodbye to each other. Wife passed shortly after this. A year later the husband got admitted again and remembered me. He told his kids who I was and they all hugged me sobbing and thanking me for caring for their parents. I learned later he passed after that admission.
#62
When a family had to put secret cameras in their mother’s room at an assisted living facility bc of suspicion that the staff was ab**ing her…….and unfortunately they were. She had bruising all over her body.
#63
Literally my favourite resident dying because of a broken heart a week after Christmas because her son died I didn’t even get to see her before hand and I didn’t even get to go to the funeral because there was none .. she had no other family just her son .. I was so enraged for her nobody deserves that..
#64
Delivering a stillborn baby on the floor of triage while i myself was 35 weeks pregnant.
#65
Doing compressions on a man who unalived his whole family, and now we had to save him.
#66
Working a code for a mom 5 days postpartum and seeing dad holding that tiny baby thinking this child might grow up without their mom.
#67
Having a patient dying told me “don’t leave. sit with me and hold my hand” while she took her last breaths. She had dementia and thought I was her daughter.
#68
A client of mine who had cancer, finally beat it, but not even two weeks into remission passing away from the flu and pneumonia. Not even two weeks of being cancer free. I always think of them.
#69
Seeing my 16yo daughter’s best friend’s twisted and mangled body from drinking and driving.
#70
Idk about numb, but when I thought I had been through enough..A child came in torn up by dogs head to toe. EMS, nursing staff, doctors, just everyone.. all were shaken up pretty bad. I think that stuck with everyone for a while.
#71
memorial day weekend 2022. 3 kids died in our ED. Srowning, unexplained and a homicide. The homicide was 7 weeks old, he died alone. His father, who was also the grandfather k**led him.
#72
Waiting for fire department to arrive to the scene of a multi-car collision. I can still hear the woman screaming from the car engulfed in flames. The silence after still haunts me.
#73
An old man asking for a hug after family decided to put his wife on hospice “she’s all i have left.”
#74
A female dementia patient who kept calling her husband the name of the man she cheated on him with for years.
Image credits: Emma Ford
#75
Watching a mom get cut and ripped open during a c-section when she wasn’t numb. Her screams haunt me.
#76
Doing compressions on my mom on the side of the road and realizing that all of the education meant nothing without access to resources.
#77
A dad and his daughter sitting outside the mom’s hospital room who had just unexpectedly passed. Janitor cleaned it up and they had someone else in there within maybe hour? He looked at us and said “things move fast around here huh”.
#78
Seeing a young child scream and cry for their mom who we couldn’t bring back.
#79
Have a 11yr coming in for her wellness visit and having some knee pain. Mom brushed it off as growing pains….turns out it was cancer.
#80
My favorite patient; I work in memory care and she knew EVERYTHING about me. I layed in bed with her during her final days. She told me she’ll always be rooting and watching over me. She told me to stay on earth for as long as I can.
#81
A husband telling me “I’m okay, I just didn’t think I was gonna lose her today” and carry her belongings out alone. Cried in the hallway for 20 minutes.
#82
Seeing a mother not care or even cry that her 8 y/o coded and died because she overdosed that baby on meds to make her sleep…
#83
A toddler pool drowning. Taking care of the mother a week later and having her committed; A few weeks after that, trying to resuscitate her post self inflicted gun shot. She had other school-aged children - all whom watched their sibling and parent die traumatic deaths.
#84
Saying goodbye to my son in the hospital i had worked 6 years at. Helped save so many lives at that hospital yet i couldn’t save my baby.
#85
Seeing a dementia patient look into a mirror and say “I feel 19 but I look in the mirror and see this old lady looking at me”
#86
The death rattle changed me. Now I can’t unhear it when I do hear it.
Image credits: Kayleigh
#87
A wife holding her husbands face saying “oh sweetie you weren’t supposed to go first.”
#88
Doing compressions on a 19y/o that was shot while i was 19 and hearing the mother screaming to save her baby.
#89
Holding a random man’s hand as he took his last breath because his family didn’t want to come in and see him like that. Who knows what he did, but he didn’t go out alone.
#90
A 20 yo female came in after being dr**ged and later on passed away, I’m a 20 yo female and often went to the same place where she got dr**ged.
#91
Sleeping in my favorite residents chair on my only night off cause her family wasn’t there.. she died at 1:15am. I went home cried. Changed and went to work by 6am.
#92
Having to “code” the love of my life and he never woke up again and having to return to work like nothing happened.
#93
A woman caked in blood from trying to save her fiance after an accident was in shock as I checked her for injuries and couldn't answer any questions. But the wail she let out when her mom walked in lives in my brain forever.
#94
He couldn’t breathe. I held my patients hand and began lowering him down to prepare for emergency intuabtion during COVID. I will never forget his huge, blue, teary eyes staring right into my soul. The head of his bed was lowered flat, but he sat upright holding my hand, our eyes locked. We said nothing, everyone around us was frantically preparing. His breathing was labored, he was struggling, but he never looked away. When it was time, the doctor asked if the patient was ready. He gave me a single nod of affirmation, and said “please don’t let me die.” We stayed locked in until the sedation kicked in, and he finally surrendered. The intubation was successful, but he died days later, only a month before his wedding. I still lose sleep over him. I feel like I failed him, even though I didn’t. But he chose me in that room, and we made a pact. Thank you for letting me write this.
#95
Watching an adult son try to pull the teeth out of his mom's mouth when she died. He was convinced she was a body double and the hospital was faking her death.
#96
A patient shot himself in the head while we were not even 15 yards away from him, and a nurse was in the room with him. Didn’t know he had the gun (obvi). We then had to quickly get over the shock so we could resuscitate him. Been numb to everything since, except loud noises.
#97
Doing CPR on a baby, then having mom say "baby wake up, sissy and brother want to play, please WAAAKKEEE UPPPP!!" then the doctor pronounced him dead since we had been doing CPR for over an hour without success.
#98
First time doing CPR and feeling ribs break, and the death rattle.
#99
A patient on hospice held my hand an hour before she died and said “I’m gonna miss you”
#100
Putting a baby who only lived a few days in the cooler in the morgue. Shutting the door and walking away wrecked me.
#101
Watching a resident's dementia slowly get worse, you just watch them lose themselves.
#102
Having a lady with dementia who is also blind ask me to pray with her because she was scared.
#103
Coding patient and he didn’t make it. Later to find his wife had overdosed in his arms while viewing his body. Then proceeded to code her.
#104
Peds code with a girl the same birthday as me. I helped parents get settled when they got there then went to help with compressions. I will always remember her name cuz I can always hear her mom screaming it. I always think of her when I blow out my candles.
#105
Honestly working as a dialysis tech and getting close with patients and then coming into work to an empty chair….. you never realize how hard an empty chair hits you until it’s your closest patient.
#106
Asked a woman what her typical eating habits were (I’m an RD). She immediately burst into tears. Her husband did all the cooking and he passed shortly before she got admitted.
#107
Walking an actively psychotic pediatric inpatient psych patient over to the adult side the morning of her 18th birthday.
#108
Pronouncing someone’s dad dead on Christmas Day when they were supposed to go home that day.
#109
Seeing a 14yo boy 3x a week for wound care for stab wound for 3 months. Finally healed, 2 weeks later he was shot and k**led in a d**g deal, he told me he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up :(
#110
"Can you give us a pill so we can sleep forever" the man of the couple living at the elderly home said to me. His wife had severe alzheimers, I believe...
