Breakthrough communication gave hope

Guest Writer

Dana went into the ER in the early morning hours of July 17, 2018. At that time she was struggling to breathe and turning blue. She could not talk because she could not catch her breath.

Once the decision was made to bring her up to ICU, everything moved quickly. Once the oxygen tube was inserted in her throat and she was given medicines, she was kept sedated enough so that she wasn’t communicating.

That was scary. When the medications were lessened to see how she would do without them, she’d open her eyes and try to motion with her hands, but they were tied to the bed so she couldn’t pull the tube out or any of the wires and IVs attached to her.

FINALLY COMMUNICATING

After about a week of this, and this is after her near brushes with death, she motioned that she wanted to write. Someone brought her paper and a magic marker.

There were a lot of staff and family in the room at this time. We “hung” onto each word she wrote. Not being able to communicate with her, not getting responses from her, was making the situation so much more excruciatingly painful.

It was difficult for her to write since her hands were tied to the bed and so they were untied with someone on each side of her in case she went for the tube.

Her fingers had turned blue and were stiff and starting to swell so those circumstances made it difficult for her to hold the magic marker, too.

HANGING ON TO EVERY WORD

But she managed to write. The first word she wrote was, “Did,” so we knew she was going to ask a question. It took her a while to write the next two words: “I have.”

We were so excited that she was communicating!

She completed her question: “Did I have a kid?”

SHOCKING!

The room was very quiet and everyone looked at each other wondering why she would ask such a question.

If you’ve gone through childbirth you would definitely know. But she hadn’t.

EXPLANATION

Then it dawned on us that while she was in that semi-comatose state, a patient had delivered by C-section on the maternity ward and the mother was brought up to ICU for extra care. Her baby was brought up to her throughout the two or three days she was in ICU. And what do babies do? The baby cried.

The first time we heard the baby crying, we asked staff if there was a baby on the floor. They said yes. We overheard the patient’s visitors talking about the situation later in the waiting room.

Everytime we heard the baby cry, even though Dana was “out of it,” we would talk to her and tell her about the mother and the baby.

By the time Dana wrote her first message to us, the mother and baby were no longer in ICU.

It just goes to show how much patients can hear when you think they can’t hear.

LITTLE HUMOR

This story has become one of our favorites. We all had a good laugh when we realized why Dana asked if she had had a kid!

MEMORIES

As the events unfolded in the ICU and days stretched from days to weeks, we kept all the notes that Dana wrote to us. The notes have been organized by date and that has helped us write this blog.