Reflection 15 – The 72-Days in Intensive Care That Would Change My Life Forever

May 2nd, 2022. Ramadan just finished and today we are celebrating Eid. My condition throughout the month has been worsening. I get exhausted very quickly and I am mostly lying in bed. Moreover, swallowing got more challenging with saliva accumulating in mouth. As a result, I’m not eating properly. Not being able to go out and enjoy like other families, my plan was at least to have my parents over. As the day passes, my ability to swallow is diminishing and things don‘t look good. After a couple of consultations, my wife sees my safest bet is to go to hospital. Though I wasn’t fully in favor of it (who would want to go on Eid!), I agreed to her decision. And that turned out to be the beginning of a new chapter in our lives!

As we arrived accompanied by other family members, I began doing different tests and scans and then moved to a room. It is clear that I have too much secretions in my lungs that I am not able to get out because of the weakness in my lung muscles. This in turn means that more CO2 is accumulating inside my body. In short, as a first step, doctors need to do it manually (and that‘s no fun at all!). I remember one of them saying get me an airway. At first, the name seemed tempting to me; I thought it was a nice thing (ooohh, how stupid I was ). It turned out to be a plastic thing that is put inside the mouth so it doesn‘t close, and then doctors begin to insert tubes deep inside to extract secretions. I still remember the face of the doctor as he mercilessly kept inserting those tubes! A terrible experience. In addition, I had to be intubated through my nose for the next couple of days until another chapter began to unfold.

My condition necessitated two major and life-changing decisions. Not being able to get sufficient nutrition through mouth meant that I needed to insert a gastrostomy tube. Basically the food goes straight into your stomach through a tube. Forget about taste and enjoying meals; feeding becomes a routine for the sake of keeping the body alive. The other decision was related to my breathing. I would either continue life with a deteriorating lung condition and difficulty in breathing or I can insert a tracheostomy; an opening in the neck so that a tube can be inserted to help in breathing. Basically, to live on life support through a ventilator or any similar device. Probably this was the hardest decision my wife and myself had to take. And we agreed to have it. From now onwards, everything would change!

But there were a couple of things that I wasn‘t fully aware of. This tracheostomy meant that I needed continuous external assistance to get mucus out of my airway. Bodies of regular people through movement and other mechanisms instilled in their bodies normally take care of it; mine can’t! Therefore, every few hours (and typically more than that), a nurse has to insert a pretty long tube into that neck opening to get mucus out. The first couple of days it felt like someone stabbing me in the neck. As time passed by, I got used to it and its accompanying pain. The thing is (that I was unaware of) that this will become my daily routine for life unless Allah wills otherwise. The second issue was that having the tube would imply lack of speech.

Just like that! My communication with the outside world is disrupted. My feelings, emotions, pain, and everything is kept inside. Conveying any sort of any message is a hectic troublesome exercise. No talking of course means more time to think and so I get to busy your heads now with my thoughts.

(To be continued)