Anxious hours in the intensive care unit
It was a long day. After 12 hours at the hospital we finally arrived home at 7:30p.m. and dropped our bags in our hallway. My wife Tina still has her cold. A seven day trip to Germany with jetlag and chronic lack of sleep take their toll. “Do you have anything urgent to do?” I ask her in a by-the-way manner. “No, not really.” While I am solving a Sudoku in the bedroom, she cuts apples in the kitchen.
In the distance I hear an ambulance’s siren. Very faintly.
Three minutes our garage door clangs open and an engine starts. “I am coming too,” I call down into the yard, but only see my wife’s exhaust fumes as she turns the first corner. Pensively I shut the gate. What is going on?
After quite a long search I finally find a motor-taxi that will bring me to the hospital.
Martina, Dra Ana and some nurses are in the x-ray department. While playing a 13 year old fell head first into a hole and sand covered his face. Until he was found and rescued by a neighbour several minutes had passed. Too many minutes. It might even have been half an hour. After ten minutes the first brain cells die.
His central nervous system is severely damaged due to the lack of oxygen. The injured cells send uncontrolled salvoes which cause the boy to suffer aggressive seizures. The pairs of hands of the staff standing around his hospital bed are holding him as tight as possible. Via the infusion strong anti-seizure medication enters his veins.
Then a CT-scan of the head and a lung x-ray follow. By this time the patient is lying in the intensive care unit. At 9 p.m. I pick up anaesthetist Dra Leslie from her home, we need reinforcements. There is work to do, even though no one knows precisely which part(s) of the brain can still be saved.
Worried faces around the intensive care bed, during which time we try to explain everything to the parents. “We do not know whether your son will ever wake up again!” Gastric tube, urinary catheter and an arterial catheter. He is all wired up with tubes and cables. Antibiotics for the lungs and medication for the cerebral swelling. Drama and sadness. Why did God let this happen?
The three of us leave the hospital at 11 p.m. Quickly to bed, since at 1a.m. the phone will ring and we will be told the results of the next blood test./KDJ
