Thank you for sharing the videos. I watched some of these when my dad spent 5 weeks in the ICU in a coma until his last days. It’s shocking to see what happens to patients, I wish my dad passed naturally and peaceful at home when it was his time rather than going through the horrible experience, the body wounds, the tracheostomy, the dialysis, the infections, only delayed his death and created more suffering.
I also think it's shocking, when I woke and found what they'd done to me I was appalled, and even more appalled when I found what was done while I was unconscious that they didn't tell me about until I asked for my records. I would like to campaign for improvements, but a) I seem to be a lone voice, people tell me I should be grateful to be alive, and b) I don't want to spend the rest of my life defining myself by what was done to me, I'd rather forget. Nearly 2 years on I am STILL waiting for trauma therapy.
My father died in intensive care, I used to think he wouldn't have known anything about it but now I'm not so sure, I don't like to think what dreams he might have had in his last days.
I am sorry your experience in ICU is still troubling you and hope you get the help you need soon.
I dont have any recollection of what was happening to me, as I was sedated, on a ventilator, for a number of weeks. I was in my own world, and these dreams I do remember today.
I accept the treatment I received both initially with sepsis and then with covid, was extreme, but the alternative would not have resulted in a positive outcome.
Patients are never moved to ICU just for the sake of it, there are compelling medical reasons to place someone under Intensive Care.I'm willing to bet of all patients that have required ICU admission, at least 60 to 70 percent would have died were it not for ICU intervention.
That being said, more needs to be done to counsel patients as to what may lay ahead, but unfortunately that is only possible when patients are admitted while conscious.
Even more needs to be done in terms of counselling patients who may have spent most of their time in ICU while unconscious.
Delirium is very real - and traumatising for many.
So true. I still remember. I call them hallucinations but they are not really, when you break it down and try to analyse it, they are absolutely real. As real as me tying this on my keyboard and you reading it.
I've tripped my teenage ass off. Psilocybin, LSD-25, Leb red and pakistani-black so strong I didn't know my butt from an hole in the ground. But ITU delerium is on another level.
In amongst the awful nightmares I remember this young doctor who was supposed to be looking after me. He would torture me, switching off the vent over and over and over again to force me eventually to agree to sign a donor card - he wanted to sell my organs on the Chinese black market you see. Now here's the thing, 4 weeks in a coma, then six months before I could get about without a wheelchair and I drove myself every single day to the hospital car park looking for this doctor. In my fevered and insane fight for survival the doctor had made the mistake of telling me what car he drove (a very rare Volvo T5-R similar to mine) so I'd skulk around the car park looking for this bastard. He had tried to insert chicken DNA into me whilst all the nurses stood around laughing at my attempts to lay eggs. "We wan't an omlette tonight - get laying' they screeched. Hell.
I had a shank in my car and there but for the grace of something, I never came across anyone driving a gold Volvo T5-R whilst wearing a doctor's smocks. I'd now be serving twenty five-to-life if I had. I would have done that doctor, and I am the most peace loving pacifist you could meet.
I still remember what he looks like, I remember his age and face, his mannerisms and his voice. I remember his taunts and his agreeing to let me have 'one last request' at death's door (I asked to watch an episode of the '80s American sitcom "SOAP" of all things, I don't think I've ever watched it!) That bastard haunts me and even 14 years later I find the dichotomy of his existence and my delerium impossible to resolve.
I went to see my GP about a year after recovery. He scoffed and said with a patronizing twattishness "Doctors cure people, not kill them" - thanks GP, I fucking love you too, you compassionless cretin.
There were so many more trips to edgewood, this one stick in the mind but there are many more and I just wish that someone, somewhere could have helped me put this madness into some sort of logical sequence - instead of it haunting every part of my soul, well what's left of it.
I’m so sorry your still going through a difficult time. I do believe there is not enough after care, I was in hospital for four months and had to rebuild myself again, eating, talking, walking etc and it is so difficult to get your head around what has happened when your pushing to try and get back to some normality, I didn’t understand if my progression was normal, if I’d ever feel the same again, I felt terribly lonely as I didn’t feel I could talk about my feelings freely where anybody would understand! I suffered with PTSD and the delerium that I suffered I thought about however it does get better, your not alone! Keep talking, I know it isn’t something you can forget about as it’s something we have lived but it will get easier x
It can take weeks, even months to come back online from a ITU coma. If he can feel your touch he is not paralysed - just slowly returning to a waking state.
There are descriptions on this forum of people taking a long time to get back to a waking state. Keep the faith and sending my best wishes at this awful time.
Hi Glen it is 3 years now. He did not have extensive physio when he was shipped out from hospital to allow covid people in. Nor whemn he was in the home. Yes i agree about him feeling you touch his body. I dont know how to get him regular physio.
We just dont understand at all.
Unfortunately one of his feet is twisted sideways now too solid
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