Tuesday Night at the ICU

My friend F was taken to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit late last night via ambulance. I found out at dinner-time tonight when her son-in-law called me from Ohio. After F's last hospital stay, her children arranged for her to have one of those "I've fallen and can't get up" alert-buttons to wear around her neck. F's daughter and son-in-law live in Ohio, and her son is a truck driver who is out-of-state during any given week.

I called the hospital to see if they'd let me into the ICU to see her, being that I'm not a family member. I told them I'm close enough to 'family' until her daughter can fly down from Ohio and until her son can drive back from Georgia. The nurse told me to be there at 8:00. And let me tell you, they didn't unlock the doors to the ICU till 8:00 on the dot.

And there was F... struggling for every breath, hooked up to oxygen with a plastic mask around her nose and mouth. She looked so tiny in the bed. I had just spoken to her last night and she sounded just fine. She was able to tell me tonight that she had gotten up to use the bathroom at 2:00 this morning and her lungs just wouldn't let her breathe. She used her "panic button" as she calls it, and the Medic Alert company got an ambulance there and called her children.

It was hard to watch F gasping for air tonight. Gasping, struggling... and I do mean struggling. It seemed that her whole body was trying to breathe in just one bit of oxygen. Her entire body seemed to lift up out of that bed trying to get the air to go into her lungs.

F is one seriously independent woman. Doesn't ask anyone for anything and if she does ask, then she truly, truly can't do it for herself. And here she is now, not able to do the most basic things on her own. Like walking and breathing.

I have one thing to say tonight. Two words. Don't smoke.

Is that so hard to understand? Just don't smoke. The cigarettes that you "can't live without" now will be the reason that you "can't live" later on. I have friends who say "Well honey, I'd just die without my cigarettes." Well, they've got it wrong--- it's the other way around.

Two words. Don't smoke.