Parting is such sweet sorrow

Excerpt

One morning, Irma, a 30-year-old woman with long blond hair, had collapsed during jogging. Deeply comatose, she was admitted to the intensive care. The CT-scan showed a catastrophic subarachnoid haemorrhage with intracerebral expansion of blood in the temporal lobe. Most probably an aneurysm from the middle cerebral artery that had ruptured. The prospect looked grim. Her pupils were fixed and dilated. We feared that she was already brain dead, but decided to continue intensive care for 24 h to see if there would be any improvement. If not, we would withdraw all life-sustaining measures and let her die, or in case she was declared brain dead we would ask her relatives for organ donation. She was mechanically ventilated. We administered vasoactive medication and treated a diabetes insipidus. …