December 9,2007, PM shift

This is my second night in a row. I got my patient back from last night, a 34 year old Caucasian male who was finally double lung ventilated this noon while I was dreaming myself off to sleep and was somewhere halfway between Japan and the North American continent. We rarely see this happen in our unit, 2 ventilators in 1 room. Each of his lung is independently ventilated with different ventilator settings, lower lung volumes for the bad lung and lesser PEEP for the good lung. He is bleeding everywhere and the only thing we could do is slap him with humungous amounts of blood products to replace his blood loss. He is only 34 with a 3yo and an 11yo at home. Wife is very distraught. I've seen these situations more than any other people in this population and it is very sad that this happens very frequently. My unit is a very gloomy unit. I feel that I have seen all the depressingly sad family situations which involve grieving for the potential and actual loss of a loved one. I feel that that might be me or my loved one in their situation. This is one of the reasons why I hate working in this unit, but then who would take care of these sick people if I move to another unit?