In The Eyes Of A Crisis
A first-hand account of COVID-19
By Ron Ciancutti
From the moment you come to life outside the womb, you search for some sign of comfort. You are conditioned to seek this, indicating all is well. I saw my youngest son lock onto my eyes when he was seconds old. Something passed between us, and I saw his body relax with recognition. Orphans may never find that missing look and perhaps will spend their lives seeking it.
Photo: © Can Stock Photo / gpointstudio
If you are hurriedly wheeled into an ICU with possible COVID-19, you will not find that look. You will not find that face. In fact, that room full of people will avoid your eyes. They don’t want to like you. They don’t want to get close to you. But they’re looking at each other, and the floor, and the instruments that are beeping and whirring, indicating things that make them react and look at each other with deeper intensity. Something significant happens: a noise, a pop, a guttural cough, and the room freezes for a minute. One of them has just entertained the possibility that you might not be here tomorrow. And you know it. And you know they know it. You feel it and it is as terrifying as anything you’ve ever endured. Someone smiles at you. It’s weak, quick, almost pitiful, but they don’t want to empathize because then they own a piece of you, and you’ll be coming back for that look. They don’t have it to give. The past two years of this have emptied their tanks.
There is a passively polite exchange that still avoids your desperate eyes and ignores your plea for human recognition. You’ve come to the wrong place for that. You pick up on their vague conversations, thinly veiled references of how many patients died last night or who was doing well yesterday but not so well this morning.
It’s a haunted-house-when-you’re-five-years-old feeling. The first time you witness a tragedy, maybe. Something is imminent, but you don’t know what.
Ok, you are stabilized. You have tubes in your arms, nose, and hands, and half the people leave the room. Someone mercilessly turns the television on. So nice to have Murder She Wrote playing in the background of what feels like your funeral arrangements.
A Risky Path
The sudden quiet has a sense of urgency. You’re waiting for something. Oh, it’s the doctor. He is covered in plastic, but his eyes are very serious looking. He is very young—maybe 30 years old. Maybe. You have shoes older than he. He tells you his name, but you can’t remember it. You try to make light. You’ve come to the wrong place. Now is a time for rawness. Things laid bare. He is still new to you, so he can be unflinchingly direct; the human condition has not kicked in, so he can slap you with all of the direct talk now and care later if need be. Trite sayings pass through your mind.
“Let’s do this.”
“We got this.
“Man up.”
Step one—you are told there are three things that can happen from here. But first you’re reminded that some of what you’re dealing with may be your fault.
Smoke? No. Drink? No. Been vaccinated? No.
Ah, hah! Tight lips. Shaking head slightly. Then a gentle nod. Somehow it just passed from the doctor’s hands to yours. You chose a risky path. We will do the best we can, but you started us off at a deficit here, pal. (“What were you thinking is implied, not spoken?”)
A deep sigh. A pause. A glance at the clock.
“Sir, it’s 9 o’clock at night. Both of your lungs are filled with pneumonia, and you’ve tested positive for COVID. Your oxygen levels are oddly solid, but that might change. If it does change during the night, you may not awaken without the assistance of a machine, and you will be on that machine for some time. If the situation gets worse, you will be placed into an induced coma, where a more-complex machine will breathe for you for a few weeks, maybe months. You will eventually awaken in a nursing home, where an attempt will be made to wean you off the machine and return your life to normal.”
You look around the room and see the remnants of the little war they have just engaged in with your body. Various tapes, wraps, wires, and plastic strips litter the room. Someone is cleaning. The television is reminding you the McRib is back at McDonald’s. You’d like to talk to your wife, but she’s been in ICU for two days already. They’ve got her stabilized and on the mend. You are on your own.
The staff has stopped checking vitals and the obsessive cleaning. The insurance-processing lady carts her office on wheels in and says things right out of the textbook. She leaves with, “Sure hope you are feeling better tomorrow.”
It’s not their fault. They’re burying too many, and they have lives, too. They also wonder if they visit 40 patients in a day, “Is THIS the one who can infect me? Is he carrying some special strain? Am I going to give this to my kid?”
No Sleep Tonight
So, I ask if that’s it. Are there any more options? And the doctor says, (I swear), “Well, a 2/3 chance you won’t wake up on a machine is good, right?’
Now, folks, I suffer from Crohn’s Disease, which is very hereditary. Before I was first diagnosed, my sister and mother had already suffered from it. When I told my doctor some of my relatives had Crohn’s, he said I had it too, without performing a single test. Stamped and coded. Assumptions are part of life, but they’re dangerous and often inaccurate.
In my business career, many of my financial decisions were based on trends in the market, so I made judgments based on that history.
To that end, it was clear to me that if I drifted off in the night and had any type of lung issue, I would fall into the assumption category and be hooked up like hundreds before me, and take my place as Patient #0366963. “COVID / VENTILATOR / ASSIGN ACCORDINGLY.”
I then decided I would not sleep. I re-positioned my bed to make it as uncomfortable as possible. I requested a large cup of cold water, I turned the TV up loud, and I brought the oxygenated meter to the front of the bed where I could see it. Whenever the gauge dipped, I huffed and puffed to get the number back up. About eight hours later, my adrenaline finally gave out, and when a male nurse walked in, he gave a deep, sincere smile.
“Quite a night,” he said.
“Young man,” I said. “I won’t hold you to it, but can I ask you something? Did you ever see anyone go on a breathing machine with numbers like I have this morning?”
He was professional. He knew his job and his limitations. But something passed between us. Maybe he was sick of the death he had been seeing for two years. Maybe he was a man’s man and heard about what I had done all night; word must have spread about the odd man in ICU sucking oxygen like an Apollo mission pilot. Without betraying his job, he smiled tightly, looked me in the eye, and shook his head. I knew the crisis had passed.
It was the glance I’d been seeking for 24 hours.
I improved within a week and was actually home two days before my wife returned.
We’re rocking his and her couches at the moment and improving daily.
And she in her kerchief and I in my cap have decided to settle in for a long winter’s nap.
Folks, make good, well-informed decisions about all of this. The thread of life is hair-thin.
Ron Ciancutti worked in the parks and recreation industry since he was 16 years old, covering everything from maintenance, operations, engineering, surveying, park management, design, planning, recreation, and finance. He is now retired. He holds a B.S. in Business from Bowling Green State University and an M.B.A. from Baldwin Wallace University. He is not on Facebook, but he can be reached at ron@northstarpubs.com.