Death in Haiti

Death in Haiti is emotionally taxing experience. Today I a patient with likely scleroderma vs. MTLD passed away in the ER. As we were coding her, we discussed how long we should continue the code as our code meds were limited. I was struck by that. This person's life is limited by the # of meds and resources. It is very likely that this woman would have passed away eventually given the poor prognosis of her condition disease, but it happened so abruptly here. This is the type of patient thar would end up on pressor support therapy in a step down unit where she would have the option of living or dying. But here, a Haitian person doesn't have that luxury. I have another who is dying as well from likely a CVA or stoke. We suspect hemorrhagic as she had unequal pupils but of course no way to confirm as we have no CT scans. When I got signout about her I was told that paternalism was encouraged here and that we should exercise it.