Back when the new coronavirus was still a remote thing happening in other places, before it upended life as we know it, my wife and I were planning to fly to Sin City, stay at the Stratosphere and drive to the Grand Canyon. It was a bucket-list type trip (the Grand Canyon part anyway; not Vegas so much).
But now of course, that’s cancelled. We’re at home for the foreseeable future. At home for work, play and everything in between. Which is fine. In fact, I’ve probably been more adamant about “social distancing” than most people, approaching even trips to the grocery store with a “get-in-and-get-out-and-don’t-go-near-anyone” attitude.
That’s because I know what it feels like to need a ventilator. And I want to make sure there’s one available for me, you, or your parents or grandparents if they need it.
Almost exactly 16 years ago I was a healthy, active college senior who went to bed thinking he had the flu and then woke up the next morning so sick he couldn’t walk or even stand. By noon I was at the local hospital, where they told me they thought I had bacterial meningitis.
I heard the words, but I didn’t really know what they meant. I knew that I felt sicker than I’d ever been, but I also knew I was at a hospital, in the United States, so they were going to make me feel better. That’s what hospitals do, right?
Well, it turned out that hospital couldn’t do it. They gave me an oxygen mask, but I still couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I was laying in bed, gasping for air like I’d just run several miles. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fill my lungs. It was scary as hell.
They put me in a helicopter to take me to a bigger hospital. During that 20 minutes in the air, it kept getting harder to breath. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to pray. First the Our Father. Then I get so light-headed and disoriented that I forgot the words to that prayer that I’d recited thousands of times. So I switched to the Hail Mary.
By the time we landed and the paramedics were wheeling me into the bigger hospital, I was having so much trouble breathing that I blacked out.
When my parents arrived that night a doctor told them that the meningococcal bacteria had spread throughout my bloodstream and was damaging my organs. My lungs were failing. They would have to put me on a ventilator.
I was sedated to make sure I stayed unconscious while the medical staff ran a tube down my throat and into my lungs. The tube was connected to a machine that essentially breathed for me. After about 10 days the antibiotics had killed off the meningococcal infection and the medical staff decided to lift the sedation, take me off the ventilator and see if I could breathe on my own. That lasted about a day or two, during which time I have hazy memories of nurses at my bedside imploring me to “Breathe deeper. You’ve got to breathe deeper,” and me trying to tell them that I couldn’t.
Then I remember a doctor telling me I had pneumonia, and they were going to have to put me back on the ventilator.
I was sedated again and intubated for about another 10 days. A doctor told my parents “He’s not out of the woods yet.”
All in all, I spent about three weeks on a ventilator. I was unconscious for most of it, thankfully. My brief moments of semi-consciousness were dominated by an overwhelming, unbearable gagging feeling. When I finally fully woke up the tube was gone, but my throat was drier than it had ever been and so scratchy I couldn’t speak above a whisper.
I hated that ventilator. But there’s no doubt it saved me. Twice, I suppose.
Meningitis took parts of my hands and feet. But because that ventilator was available, it didn’t take my life.
Because of that ventilator, I’ve had 16 more years. In those 16 years I’ve gone swimming in the ocean off Rio de Janeiro and hiked the Swiss Alps. I’ve written two books, finished grad school and gotten to know my nieces and nephew. I met a beautiful woman who I clicked with better than anyone I’d ever met, and I married her.
Because of that ventilator, I know what 16 more years can mean. So I’m staying home, until this damn virus is gone. Because I don’t want to take a ventilator away from someone else because I need one, or someone I breathed on needs one.
The Grand Canyon will still be there when this is all over.
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