Tag: My ICU Experience in Chapters

10 Good things that ICU and hospital staff did:

It’s been more than year of a really stressful pandemic, that has made millions of people sick, many of them being admitted to the ICU, and many dying.

ICU’s are more full than they ever have been before, creating impossible workloads for many ICU staff.

I’m having a hard time too. Sometimes it feels like my heart will just burst of sadness and other times I’m so agitated that small things like the ever growing pile of laundry seems so monumental that it’s unsolvable.

The world is falling apart, with political changes and undercurrents, outward proud racists seem to be increasing in numbers, mass shootings, and many other things splash across our news screens everyday, making the world seem hopeless, and ending.

When I got out of the ICU, I typed in the hashtag #ICU into twitter, and was introduced to the wonderful world of tweeting ICU staff. So many of you were so kind and generous with answering questions, and many of you followed me back.

When I started this blog, you read it, retweeted it, liked my tweets and responded to my tweets. You let me know that what I was saying was important, and you listened.

Thank you. You helped me to emotionally heal a bit (not all the way yet).

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I’ve been trying to think of a way to give back to you, during what must be a very stressful time for you. It’s stressful to be in the ICU, and to have family in the ICU, but it’s also stressful to have a suddenly increased workload, be wearing so much PPE that you look like space martians, and then be told that Covid is all a hoax, the hospital’s are empty and you are lying about that workload.

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I have always wanted to help people with this blog. Improving the ICU for those that come after me is the very reason I write it. I admit that each time the viewership goes up, I get a little emotional energy jolt, but that wasn’t the reason I started it. It’s also not the reason I haven’t given up on writing it, even though my life has gotten harder. I feel guilty that I’m not able to write in it as much as I used to.

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Hopefully this list of good things that happened in the ICU and in the ward after the ICU makes your load a little bit easier to carry and your heart smile just a bit for just a while.

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1.) I am alive. I did not die in the ambulance when I stopped breathing. I did not die on Christmas day when I crashed.

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2.) I was so out of it. I knew that occasionally there were people who stood at the end of my bed and talked, but I didn’t know who they were or what they were talking about. I thought maybe they had their staff meetings there.

One day my nurse leaned over me and said “the doctor’s are going to be doing rounds soon. They will stand right there,” she pointed, ”and they will talk about your case. You can listen because it’s about you. You can also ask questions if you want to.”

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3.) I couldn’t speak because I was still intubated. I asked for paper and wrote “I’m sorry.”

My nurse looked at me and asked “Why? You didn’t do anything wrong?”.

“I’m sorry for being racist.” I wrote.

“When were you racist”, she asked.

“When I sang racist songs to you.” I replied.

“You weren’t racist. You didn’t sing anything racist. You can’t sing. You can’t even talk. You have a tube in your throat that prevents that. You’re writing this down to me right now.”

“Oh”, I wrote, and leaned back.

She didn’t say I was the worst person in the world, because I was racist, which I feared she would. She didn’t laugh when it was obvious I was talking about something that didn’t happen. She continued to treat me very well, without resentment. She was one of the best nurses I had and I really really liked her.

Note: This will make much more sense if you you read My ICU experience in chapters, on this blog. There you will see that under sedation I didn’t know if I was male or female, and didn’t know if alive, dead of in purgatory (I’m not even Catholic). It was a complete loss of self, including my believe I was the worst person in the world who was a racist, and was so bad, that the doctors decided to keep me in a permanent coma to protect the nurses.

Although my nurse didn’t know this, and the apology made no sense to her, she didn’t take this apology the wrong way, and I am very grateful.

Over the days after I woke from sedation, her face became a reassuring symbol that I was safe in her care.

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4.) When I was sedated, and totally out of it, a nurse washed, and braided my waist length hair. She even put her own scrunchies and barrettes in my hair to make me “look nice”. That touched my parents so much that they told me about it several times.

To be perfectly honest: It’s not waist length anymore. I got it cut to be layered and about 6 inches shorter about 3 weeks ago and it still seems really short, although to others it’s probably still long.

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5.) When I asked for information on twitter, you tweeted me studies that answered my questions. I needed to understand and I wanted to tell the world about what the ICU was like, and you helped me to do that.

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6.) When I tweeted asking about the long term effects of sepsis which I got while I was in the ICU, you told me about the UK Sepsis Trust, where I got all the information I needed.

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7.) An ICU doctor told this joke “An ICU doctor went to a conference. His wife was worried about being lonely when he was gone. He told her to get something to keep her company while he was gone. When he came home, he found his wife in bed with another man, and yelled “A dog, I meant you should get a dog to keep you company, not a man.”

Yep it’s a corny joke, but it and all the other corny jokes he told made me smile. He started each day with a corny joke that made everybody laugh, and I’m sure he didn’t realize his patients heard him, but I did, and it brightened a part of each awake days there.

8.) I have started many tweets with “As a patient, I”. You considered and respected one patients point of view. Thank you.

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9.) I laid in my ICU bed. A nurse took a Christmas mint out of a pile of Christmas mints and put it in her mouth, before coming to my bed and leaning over me. The smell made me want a Christmas mint, which I love.

She must have realized this, because she walked to the garbage and spit it out, before coming back to me.

That small kindness, did not go unnoticed

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10.) I wanted a pen and paper almost as soon as I woke up from sedation, and I was freely given a pen and as much paper as I wanted. I still have those notes that I wrote about what happened under sedation.

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Hopefully this brightened your day a bit. It brightened my day to write it, so much that I continued after 10 and wrote 20 things.

I will post the first 10 now, and the next ten when I have time (hopefully tomorrow).

If this made your smile, and helped you please help other people by tweeting good things that happen in your ICU, with the hashtag #GoodICU and / or sharing this blog post in any way you can.

My ICU Experience Chapter 6:

The Chapters form is back, well at least for now. I’ve been stuck on it for so long. Hopefully you’ll see chapter 7 next week.

Of course, there is one thing I learned during this very chaotic time in my life: never make plans. If I make plans something will inevitably make this plans impossible to actualize. If I don’t make plans, I’ll have a good day in which I could do something.

At least that’s the way it seems to be going lately.

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If don’t know about my Chapters, I am writing my ICU experience in chapters, like a novel, because I have novel writing exprience. You can read chapters 1 to 5 by going to the heading “my experience in chapters at the top of this blog, and I encourage you to do so.

Everything that happens in the chapters, happened to me while I was in the ICU. Some of it was because of sedation, didn’t actually happen, but it happened to me, as real as anything else happened to me.

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My Experience in Chapters – Chapter 6:

I turned from the nurses, who were talking about urine feeds, and followed a empty hospital hallway. As I walked the hallway turned to sand, and the sand turned to desert.

A crowd of people, wandered through and sat at tables in the sand, at outdoor restaurant, entirely made of sand.

A little girl came up to me took my hand and said “Come with me”.

She lead me through buildings and a street made entirely of sand, until I came across my cousin, who greeted me and introduced me to his husband Avers, and his children: a three year old and a baby.

My cousin lead me through the sand, to a mansion made entirely of sand.

“Sand?” I said “You made a real sand castle?”

“Ya isn’t it great? When we get tired of part of it, all we do is tear it down, and build a new part of it. The sand is free. We can add as many additions on to it as we want. Come in.” He lead me to the door, but the idea of being in a sand castle, unnerved me a bit.

I stopped at the door, and asked “Won’t the sand collapse in on us?” I asked.

“No, no, this is a new way of building with sand. It won’t fall until we want it to.”

Still skeptical I followed him in. It was gorgeous. The kitchen, with sand counters, a sand table, sand chairs and sand appliances, lead into a patio that overlooked the beach. As I sat and visited, I watched the water lap into the shore.

“It’s nice for swimming.” I commented.

“Oh ya, the children love to take swimming lessons.”

“I can imagine” I said, as I recounted my own experiences with swimming lessons.

My cousin, and his husband told me about their children and their lives living in this land where everything was made of sand. I started becoming less and less involved, and more and more like I was watching it on a TV, but not apart of it.

I watched cousin take his 3 year old daughter, to a fashion company to design a new nail polish, that marbled as it went on the nails.

She enthusiastically designed the entire nail polish from the colours, how it would marble, and what the end product would be like. Although she was only 3 years old, she acted like a miniature CEO, making all the decisions with the aid of woman who worked for the fashion company.

Her face was put on all the ads and she was made the new “it” girl. This was famous three year old, who everybody wanted their child to be like, lead the fashion industry, and made all the money for the family.

As my cousin was pouring all his attention into his 3 year old, this nail polish (that the fashion company was backing), a famous billionaire (who I won’t name because he really exists), stole the land my cousin and Avers bought, as well as the sand castle on it, and the baby in it.

My cousin took his 3 year old, left the fashion house, and tried to get his baby back. The famous billionaire refused to give the baby back, or to let anybody go and get him.

Just as my cousin’s baby was crawling through sand, perliously close to the ocean with the tide coming it, I was screaming “he’s going to die”, as my cousin hired a helicopter, parachuted on to the beach, grabbed the baby, and ran away.

When my cousin and his daughter returned to the fashion company, they had already moved on to the new “it” child who was even younger and cuter.

Having spent all of their money, my cousin and his husband, tried to make their baby the new “it” child, but were told there the baby was too old and there was a 10 year waiting list for “it” children. They would have to audition a baby that wasn’t born yet, time the babies birth for just the right time, and then go through the process again, if they wanted another “it” child.

Deciding they couldn’t wait 10 years they, found another way to make money and rebuild their lives.

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Note: Although this particular cousin doesn’t have a husband or children, it didn’t register as odd that he did at the time.

Note #2: I shortened this storey. As you can see it’s not in novel form. I stuck trying to decided if should even include this storey, because it is so odd and unlike the rest of my ICU experience. I wonder if it was a dream. Why did I fade from my own storey, and become like I was watching it on a tv? Why did it include people who didn’t exist? Why was it so detailed? If I’d written it with dialog it could have become fantasy novella.

In the end, I need to unstuck myself and because it happened in my sedation and is apart of my ICU experience I will include it, even though it is very weird.

Note#3: As always please share this blog post with others.

Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for sharing it.