Do you know what a ventilator is?

It’s ok if you don’t. I doubt most Americans do. It's unlikely that our Nation’s “leaders” have any idea what a ventilator is either.

With so much talk about ventilators, I thought I would provide you with my simplified version.

2/12 A ventilator is a machine that is utilized when a person can no longer breathe on their own. The causes are myriad: infection, trauma, blood clots, overdoses, head injuries….. many, many reasons to put someone on a ventilator.

3/ Is it a magic pill? Like an IV? Like an ‘invasive’ COVID nasal swab? No, mechanical ventilation is one of the most extreme forms of life support.

How do we put someone on a ventilator? Let’s pretend you have COVID, and you are so short of breath

4/ that you feel like you are drowning, you are sure you are going to die because actually you are without intervention from your medical team- experts in resuscitation and airway management.

5/ We administer medications to [hopefully] sedate you adequately and then another medication to paralyze all the muscles in your body but not your brain [yes, that’s right]. After you are paralyzed, we open your mouth and using a device called a laryngoscope, attempt to

6/12 visualize the trachea (windpipe) and insert the breathing tube called an endotracheal tube. This procedure is called ‘intubation.’ If we place the tube incorrectly or are unable to place the tube, you will die (hence our medical training).

7/ Once the endotracheal tube is secured in your trachea (doesn’t sound comfortable but we make every attempt to provide enough sedation), the tube is hooked up to a machine called a ventilator. Then comes a lot of math. Figuring out what settings ‘work’ to combat the disease

8/ you are up against. In some disease processes or an operating room, the settings can be pretty standard, but not COVID. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to best manage patients on ventilators.

So, you have an endotracheal tube in your trachea pumping oxygen and pressure

9/ to your lungs, IVs infusing sedative and sometimes paralytic medications, laying in an ICU bed alone (it’s more boring than what you are doing now). Your family and friends can not be there to get you through this miserable time. All the while, your medical team is hoping

10/ that, over the course of days and maybe weeks, your oxygenation begins to improve and that your heart and other organs do not begin to fail. We work tirelessly and try to beat this awful disease.

11/ One can debate how many thousand ventilators we are short or how many ventilators factories can produce, but do not believe this will magically fix our country’s problem. Unfortunately, once on a ventilator, your chance of survival from COVID is 14%-50% at best.

12/ All of this sound graphic and disturbing? Yes, this is real, raw life in our country right now. Doesn't staying at home seem like a much better way to save lives?