I have a very close friend, an honorary brother, who has been in ICU for 109 days as of today. For the last 2 1/2 months he has been on a ventilator. I am his health care power of attorney. This ordeal is torture but as long as he wants to try to survive this I will support him.
Image by Alexander Gresbek from Pixabay
To use a cliché, I’m on an emotional roller coaster. He takes a turn for the worse, and I’m crushed, in tears all the time, can’t sleep, don’t want to eat or do anything other than sit in front of the television watching reruns of old sitcoms.
When he has four or five days in a row of making progress at “weaning” (In this context, I mean the gradual withdrawal of a patient from assisted breathing on a life-support system not the joyful process of a baby learning to eat solid food), I allow myself to experience hope, even against my better judgement. Then I try to pull myself together and support him on his road to recovery and try to take care of my own health and emotional well-being.
The doctor’s give him a slim chance of making it off the ventilator. He has the option of being taken off and allowed to die with his friends and morphine to help with the transition, but he wants to live and he wants to go home so he is struggling for his life.
As I go through my day-to-day tasks while holding this deep grief in my heart, I wonder how many other people are in similar circumstances and so fragile that one small pebble can break them.
A few years back, a young boy gave me this heart at a protest I attended. I don’t remember what the issue was, but I remember a 4-year old boy shared with me an important truth.
