PATIENT: 31 Days of 5-Minute Free Writes

The dog has settled down, so let’s hope that sticks for five minutes!

I can’t decide whether to write about the quality of being patient or the situation of being a patient.

I have thought often during this pandemic about my mom’s stays in an ICU in late 2017/early 2018. She ended up in the ICU at Shands/UF Health in late 2017 because of pneumonia.

The entire story is long (and I still wish I had the guts to ask for her medical records), but for the purpose of this blog, I’ll focus on intubation.

If I had not seen her situation — had not seen essentially the entire intubation process once (she was intubated a second time), I wouldn’t have the same insight I have into what a delicate process it is.

I’ve seen plenty of medical shows where the actors make it look like incubating a human being is pretty much as easy as putting a straw into a soda. It is not at all that simple.

First of all, there is the paperwork/electronic documentation — consent, warnings, etc.

My mom was intubated at around 3 in the morning on Christmas morning of 2017. She was at a teaching hospital, so that did make things a bit more of a multi-person event, because of the students watching the procedure (and don’t we all want people to learn to be good doctors? It’s just stressful when they’re doing the learning based on your loved one).