I just read through this whole thread, and I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes from all the heartbreaking stories. I like to think that I'll remember every patient that dies under my care, but already after a few years some of the stories are starting to blur together.
Some stick with you forever, though...
We had an nurse at our hospital who was a single dad of a two-year-old son. Grandma often brought the son by the hospital to see his dad since they lived just up the street, and a lot of us residents/nurses etc had met the kid. So one summer night, when I was on trauma call, this nurse and his son were walking past the hospital after his shift was done. Dad let go of his son's hand for a second, the kid fell off the curb into traffic. An oncoming car ran him over. This guy came running into the ED with his son in his arms, screaming. Massive head trauma, unstable vitals. We obviously did everything - intubation, head CT - despite the fact that the kid's head was essentially crushed. Dad was just standing in the corner of the trauma bay, covered in blood and brain, crying. I don't think there was a dry eye in the ED. I went to the bathroom and sobbed for a good forty-five minutes after it was all over.
Last year I was at our pediatric affiliate, sewing up a facial lac in the ED. In the room next to me, the ER docs were evaluating a 16-year-old kid who had leg pain for a couple weeks. He'd been seen at an outpatient clinic a couple times, told it was "growing pains" or maybe a pulled muscle, but it wasn't getting better and now he was having some low-grade fever and chills. He seemed like a really nice kid, polite, athletic, wanting to get this taken care of before basketball tryouts next week. I hadn't even finished suturing the lac next door before the kid had a PEA code. It took a solid day of workup after his admission to the PICU to get the answer - massive tumor lysis syndrome from lymphoma, there was tumor in pretty much every major organ. We got called to put in a dialysis catheter later that night. I think he lasted all of about twelve hours before he died. I cried that time, too.
Nice gentleman came into the ER while I was moonlighting last week - severe lower abdominal pain, tachy, hypotensive. He knew something was wrong, even though he was a "pretty healthy guy". "Don't let me die, doc", was the last thing he said before he coded. We actually got back vitals long enough to diagnose him with a pulsatile abdominal mass, and rushed to the OR. I cried while he died with my hands in his open abdomen trying to get a cross-clamp on the aorta. He had a free intraperitoneal rupture. It sucked.
There are days when I really think I should just quit this and open up a bar...