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- Cancer care
- End of life care
- Critical care/intensive care
- Terminal care
- Palliative care
- Poetry
- Critical care
- Cancer
“I need to talk to you”
not do you have a moment,
or when you have a second,
“we are about to have a code blue”
It's a young woman,
with a young family,
stage 4 cancer
we hoped it was PE, but it's DIC
A day like any other
Their son still needs to be picked up at school
Instead we admit her to ICU
no monitor, no lines, no need
the unit clerk asks me to specify a diet
“whatever she wants”
“So DAT?”
Husband sits by her side
face worn as his faded jeans
I write orders for midazolam and dilaudid
She asks for lemonade
Do they sense the urgency?
We watch the mottling creep up her neck
There was no lemonade, just ginger ale
And a look shared between them I can't forget
I'm not sure they knew
there were just moments
it was just moments
until her last breath of air
No code blue after all
She was made comfort care
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Janet Barkhouse from Dalhousie Humanity-HEALS for her helpful edits, pushing my creative boundaries.
Footnotes
Competing interests None.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.