Patient experience on a respiratory ventilator – described by a Covid-19 ICU RN.
Here you go folks… for those people who do not understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance of going out without a mask…
For starters, it 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 your throat and stays there until you live, or you die.
It is done under anesthesia for 2 to 3 weeks without moving, often upside down, with a tube inserted from the mouth up to the trachea and allows you to breathe to the rhythm of the lung machine. The patient cannot talk or eat or do anything naturally – the machine keeps you alive.
The discomfort and pain they feel from this means medical experts must administer sedatives and painkillers to ensure tube tolerance for as long as the machine is needed. It is like being in an artificial coma.
After 20 days from this treatment, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass, and gets mouth or vocal cords trauma, as well as possible pulmonary or heart complications.
It is for this reason that old or already weak people cannot withstand the treatment and die. Many of us are in this boat … so stay safe unless you want to take the chance of ending up here.
Add a tube into your stomach, either through your nose or skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around your butt to collect the diarrhea, a Foley catheter to collect urine, an IV for fluids and meds, an A-line to monitor your BP that is completely dependent upon finely calculated med doses, teams of nurses, CRNA’s and MA’s to reposition your limbs every two hours and lying on a mat that circulates ice cold fluid to help bring down your 104 degree temp.
-Anyone want to try all that out? Stay home and wear a mask when you go out! Stay safe and well! –
The patient can hear everything that is said so if the staff carelessly talks about death, the patient can panic. If the sedatives are lessened, the patient panics because he/she cannot breathe or talk or, in his/her case, move. When they begin to lower the pain medications, the patient screams in his/her head but cannot make a sound. When they take out the tubes it is extremely uncomfortable. A tracheotomy may replace the respirator, the patient still cannot talk or eat without a tube.
80% of American patients have delirium. They suffer quite vivid hallucinations. While everybody is celebrating taking photos and cheering as they leave hospital, their faces look so puzzled…
Your child, your spouse, your parent, suffers from Covid-19 alone in the hospital. The victims are not limited to strangers. When you choose to crowd, unmasked, into newly opened stores for some irrelevant purchase, ask yourself if it is worth a lifetime of knowing your loved ones may have died, alone.