The ICU is not what you see on TV.
But you don’t want to find this out first hand.
I saw a picture of a group of physicians and nurses in the “COVID ICU” on social media today. It was the same intensive care unit I worked in for years as a medical trainee. I recognized it right away with its beige tiled floor, clear glass rooms, and that awful yellowish paneled wood work area. Suddenly a flood of emotions passed over me. Memories unrolling one after another. And I realized something…
After all these years I still feel deeply the pang of the long hours in that ICU spending hour after hour with the sickest of the sick. I still hear the alarm beeps. I smell the cleaner in the air and feel the cold as the temperature drops in the wee hours of the morning only rectified by the overly starched heated hospital blankets. And I still remember the patients.
I can see the cancer patient getting treatment with medications making them so sick they could no longer breath on their own. In the corner I see the young cystic fibrosis patient praying for a miracle transplant. I remember standing in a pool of blood putting giant tubes down throats for patients with massive stomach bleeds on the brink of death. And I will never forget the numerous patients so sick with infections in their blood all their organs were failing them, one after another. I hear the ‘code blue’ alarm ringing and nurses yelling for help. I can feel my stomach drop and my heart race a bit as I run towards the room for CPR.
Sometimes I was there with you alone at 3am, doing everything possible to save you. And other times your family was at your bedside when the ultimate tragedy struck. Tears could not be stopped on either side of our exchange as they said goodbye.
Seeing that picture I remembered everything so vividly my heart felt heavy in my chest. I realized suddenly very few people know this experience. Very few ever have the emotional experiences attached to seeing that ICU. Most Americans (luckily) have never personally witnessed the wrath an ICU on the delicate human body. Most have not had a loved one suffer through countless procedures or treatments, with lines and tubes sticking in and out of every body part possible. They haven’t seen their beloved spend day after day hooked up to breathing machines and machines mimicking kidneys when their bodies basic systems start to fail. They haven’t seen the trees of pumps with IV medications surging into large veins in the neck and groin, while their loved ones lay paralyzed and asleep in a bed growing more and more swollen from the fluids trying to sustain life. This isn’t the television version of the ICU you have been shown before. It isn’t glamorous. At all. People don’t always survive and there is nothing TV viewable about the actual ICU experience.
I know one thing for certain. Be happy you haven’t been there and don’t know that experience. But more importantly just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It is real. It is the most tragic existence you’ll never be able to imagine.
Wear a mask. Stay home. Stay distanced when you must go out. Please avoid groups. And keep yourself safe. You don’t want to learn what the ICU is really like, trust me.