ICU
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) was a frightening place. Most of the patients were extremely ill with pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) and relied on ventilators to breathe for them until the medications they were taking had time to work.
Many of them died before that could happen.
Kevin was a patient who’d been very short of breath and had gone to Ward 86, the outpatient clinic, before being immediately transferred to 5A. He was strikingly handsome and I was intimidated the first time I met him. His breathing deteriorated quickly and he was rushed into the ICU and put on a ventilator. Day after day he lay there, waiting for the medications to work. Finally, almost 5 weeks later, they transferred him back to the AIDS ward, where I heard his nurse say Kevin had survived being in the ICU longer than any other patient in the hospital’s history.
I was putting balm on his incredibly cracked lips one morning when he opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Please,” he whispered.
I was so relieved he was finally conscious, especially given the length of time he’d been intubated. I could only imagine what his lungs had been through.
He looked at me again and faintly whispered, “Please.”
I leaned over to hear him better.
“Please,” he whispered again, “do you have a cigarette?”
Wow
Wow, that took a turn I wasn’t expecting! I was in ICU for 4 weeks this time last year with multiple organ failure; but also ended up with pneumonia and was put into a coma for 2 weeks. I remember ICU being such an unusual place. It’s nothing quite like any other hospital ward.
Once I was transferred to another ward, my parents were able to put me in a wheelchair and take me outside the front of the hospital for some fresh air each day. Before going into hospital, I was a heavy vaper (after quitting smoking many years ago) but going into a coma finally forced me to quit.
When my dad wheeled me out of the front doors there was always a gathering of people with cigarettes in their hands. I would hold my breath, in fear of setting off any cravings (but thankfully, they never did).
A few times we saw patients among the smokers, one of which stuck out. He was no older than my parents but was extremely frail and stood hunched over in a hospital gown. His hands would shake when he brought the cigarette up to his mouth. Each inhale of smoke was followed by a fit of coughs. Watching him from afar each day, I think I had the same realisation that you had in writing this piece… Addiction knows no bounds.