DRTDEVL
Mothfukle
Pardon the spelling and odd words that may enter this post, my hands have too many tremors to actually type so I am using voice to text.
As stated in the beer exchange thread, I was placed in a medically induced coma on December 11th, where I remained for 38 days. Many people wonder what the experience is like.. can you hear? Do you know what's going on? Do you see anything? In my experience, it was a 38 day long lucid dream. You know, where everything could be real yet is just slightly off from reality? If you ever watch that show 911 Lonestar, as stupid as the scenarios are, the second episode of this season portrays this in an eerily accurate manner. I had the 'joy' of seeing this episode mere days after waking up and being transferred to the respiratory Care unit. It left me stunned and shaking with its accuracy.
In my lucid dream during that time, I was a covid patient. All of the hospitals in the upper Midwest had been overrun and there was no room for anybody to get in. I needed to get in the hospital or I would die from covid pneumonia, and the government had sent out Army reserve units to set up mobile hospitals in all of the smaller communities in the area. The entire time, I was searching for one that had a bed for me, going from place to place to place. Finally, in some random community in west-central Iowa I found bed space. Upon admission, I realized every one of the nurses working there were medics that I had served with in Germany and Iraq 15 years ago.
See what I mean about not quite reality but could be?
Within the dream, there were choices to be made, and there was was always the easy way out or a difficult path forward. The easy way out would have been to just go home and hope for the best. The difficult Way Forward was to drive on, barely able to breathe, and keep digging to find bed space. Once I found a bed, the choices suddenly became different. My memory of this part is a little bit fuzzy, but it involved some game being played by the medics that had a butterfly effect on everything around us. Some choices involved an easy way out, some choices involved a lot of death and destruction worldwide. I continued to choose the difficult path forward, because I somehow knew that anytime I took the easy way out, that would be my last breath in the real world.
Prior to admission, I made a promise to my wife that our son would not grow up without his father and that I would make it through this alive. I always try to maintain being a man of my word, and I was not going to fail in this mission. Upon my admission to the ICU, I told the doctor to do everything possible to save my life up to the point of intubation, and that we would have that conversation if the time came that it would be necessary. 18 hours later, I was told they would need to intubate. I told them no, I have to get back to my son. They said no, you don't understand. In order to get back to your son the only way is to be intubated now. I asked is this the last, best hope of seeing him again? The doctor responded by saying "sir, this is your only chance at survival."
I know the numbers, and I know the odds. 80% of those who go on the vent do not come through it alive. I was determined to be a part of the 20% that did, hence always taking the difficult path forward. I don't know how I pulled it off, there are at least five separate instances that occurred that should have killed me, from strokes, to infections, even a yeast infection of the lungs while on the vent. Each one of those could have killed me instantly, yet somehow I fought through it all.
Since I'm still going to be holed up in the hospitals physical rehabilitation unit for the next 5 days, I should have plenty of time to answer any questions y'all might have about my experience. Fire away!
As stated in the beer exchange thread, I was placed in a medically induced coma on December 11th, where I remained for 38 days. Many people wonder what the experience is like.. can you hear? Do you know what's going on? Do you see anything? In my experience, it was a 38 day long lucid dream. You know, where everything could be real yet is just slightly off from reality? If you ever watch that show 911 Lonestar, as stupid as the scenarios are, the second episode of this season portrays this in an eerily accurate manner. I had the 'joy' of seeing this episode mere days after waking up and being transferred to the respiratory Care unit. It left me stunned and shaking with its accuracy.
In my lucid dream during that time, I was a covid patient. All of the hospitals in the upper Midwest had been overrun and there was no room for anybody to get in. I needed to get in the hospital or I would die from covid pneumonia, and the government had sent out Army reserve units to set up mobile hospitals in all of the smaller communities in the area. The entire time, I was searching for one that had a bed for me, going from place to place to place. Finally, in some random community in west-central Iowa I found bed space. Upon admission, I realized every one of the nurses working there were medics that I had served with in Germany and Iraq 15 years ago.
See what I mean about not quite reality but could be?
Within the dream, there were choices to be made, and there was was always the easy way out or a difficult path forward. The easy way out would have been to just go home and hope for the best. The difficult Way Forward was to drive on, barely able to breathe, and keep digging to find bed space. Once I found a bed, the choices suddenly became different. My memory of this part is a little bit fuzzy, but it involved some game being played by the medics that had a butterfly effect on everything around us. Some choices involved an easy way out, some choices involved a lot of death and destruction worldwide. I continued to choose the difficult path forward, because I somehow knew that anytime I took the easy way out, that would be my last breath in the real world.
Prior to admission, I made a promise to my wife that our son would not grow up without his father and that I would make it through this alive. I always try to maintain being a man of my word, and I was not going to fail in this mission. Upon my admission to the ICU, I told the doctor to do everything possible to save my life up to the point of intubation, and that we would have that conversation if the time came that it would be necessary. 18 hours later, I was told they would need to intubate. I told them no, I have to get back to my son. They said no, you don't understand. In order to get back to your son the only way is to be intubated now. I asked is this the last, best hope of seeing him again? The doctor responded by saying "sir, this is your only chance at survival."
I know the numbers, and I know the odds. 80% of those who go on the vent do not come through it alive. I was determined to be a part of the 20% that did, hence always taking the difficult path forward. I don't know how I pulled it off, there are at least five separate instances that occurred that should have killed me, from strokes, to infections, even a yeast infection of the lungs while on the vent. Each one of those could have killed me instantly, yet somehow I fought through it all.
Since I'm still going to be holed up in the hospitals physical rehabilitation unit for the next 5 days, I should have plenty of time to answer any questions y'all might have about my experience. Fire away!
