We aren’t talking enough about what surviving the ICU looks like. It is not a victory.

When I woke up in the ICU I was 19 years old. I was in diapers. I could not lift my legs because the blankets were too heavy. I had tubes in my face and chest, a catheter, a femoral line. Everything hurt. I was confused and scared. It took weeks to be able to simply walk again.

I asked over and over and over what had happened. They would explain and I would cry and cry and then about an hour later I would forget. I’d ask again. We did this for weeks.

I was fortunate to have insurance, so we “only” paid the $10k deductible plus the lost wages from my mom taking months off of work. My insurance paid hundreds of thousands. I needed physical therapy to regain simple skills. It took months to return to being functional.

Many patients have permanent organ damage after the ICU. I have high blood pressure that is likely connected to acute kidney failure I experienced in a second ICU visit a few years after the first. We are not sure if/when that might recover.

COVID patients are having severe complications in multiple organs. We don’t even know what we will see long-term. Herd immunity is not a victory. How many will die? How many more will wake up like I did and spends weeks/months/years working toward a new, more difficult normal?

Where will the resources come from for all of that? For hundreds of thousands of people? Millions of people? How much pain will we inflict upon our people? For what?

I forgot to mention the nightmares. 5 years later they haven’t stopped. The only difference now is that I’ve stopped hoping they will.