An oral rendition of a post by Enrique G. Murillo, Jr.
Here you go folks... for those people who don't understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance of going out and about without a mask...
For starters, a ventilator is NOT an oxygen mask put over the mouth while the patient is comfortably lying down and reading magazines. Ventilation for Covid-19 is a painful intubation that goes down the throat and stays there until the patient lives or dies.
Ventilation is done under anesthesia. The patient is intubated for 2 to 3 weeks, unable to move, often hung upside down. A tube inserted into the mouth up to the trachea pumps in air according to the rhythm of the lung machine. The patient can't talk or eat and is kept alive by machines.
The discomfort and pain felt by the patient means medical experts have to administer sedatives and painkillers to ensure tube tolerance for as long as the machine is needed.
After 20 days on the machines, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass, suffers mouth or vocal cord trauma, and may well suffer pulmonary or heart complications.
It is for this reason that old or already weak people can't withstand the treatment and die. This is NOT the flu.
In addition to the ventilator, keeping a patient alive also involves a tube into the stomach, either down the nose or through the skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around the butt to collect the diarrhea, a foley catheter to collect urine, an IV for fluids and meds, an A-line to monitor blood pressure, dependent upon finely calculated med doses, and teams of nurses, CRNA’s and MA’s, to reposition limbs every two hours on a mat that circulates ice cold fluid to help bring down 104 degree temp.
Want to avoid all that? Then, either stay home or wear a mask when you go out! Stay safe and well!-
What is not often mentioned, is that the comatose patient can hear everything that is said. So if the staff carelessly talks about death, the patient is likely to panic. If the sedatives are lessened, the patient panics because he can't breath or talk or move. When pain medications are reduced, the patient screams in his head but can't make a sound. Taking out the tubes is extremely uncomfortable. The Ventilator may be gone, but the patient still can't talk or eat without a tube.
All Covid-19 patients suffer alone in the hospital. The victims are not limited to strangers. It may be your child, spouse, or parent that suffers when a person chooses to crowd, unmasked, into newly opened stores for some irrelevant purchase. Is it worth a lifetime of knowing your loved one suffered, maybe died, alone?
