Are medically induced comas mandatory and best for every intubated patient on mechanical ventilation? What do many ICU patients experience during prolonged sedation? Hear it from those that have and continue to live it.
Very interesting video, and poignant. I spent three weeks in ICU dystopia a couple of years ago. I can relate to all of these people. It was truly horrific. Flashbacks are very rare now for me and I've worked through the things I saw and pieced them together to work out why I was thinking them. I don't know if sedation was necessary for me but it really messed me up for many months afterwards. Still, better than being dead.
Was an ER nurse for 15 yrs. finally caught covid at work in November 2020, spent 2 months in an induced coma going through the cytokine cascade, acute/chronic hypoxia and cyanosis. hypercoagulability, extreme electrolyte imbalances, Burkholders pneumonia, ICU psychosis, and a brief cardiac arrest. What i experienced in my mind was not dreams but alternate universes. Two years later, I can still feel the absolute terror and hopelessness of the scenarios, smell and taste the blood and sweat, the adrenalin coursing my body as I fight to the death brutally killing one after another. The look on my young sons face as we move through the slaughter. But unbelievably worse than that is the hole in my heart from another scenario where I own a cattle ranch and have a wife and daughter I very much love...whom I abandoned by waking up. I cant stop missing them. I never tell anyone the horrors, I will never the same...
I am so sorry for what you have suffered. If you are willing to share this on the podcast, please contact me. Your perspective as a nurse and a survivor is invaluable. Contact me at: www.daytonicuconsulting.com
