Thanksgiving brings moments of nostalgia – for some folks, but not for me, not this year. This year I am extremely thankful to be living in a time of modern medicine. So much of what we have in our hospitals did not exist 10 years ago, let alone 40, 50 and 80 years ago as I realized years ago, when I used to peruse the old papers to find local news for the “Today in Local History” column.
Although I do not recall the exact date, a brief article in a pre-World War II newspaper reported a man who had survived an automobile accident. Although he showed no obvious trauma, he went home, did his regular chores with some complaints about pain – and died a few days later. He probably died from internal injuries that today would have been immediately obvious to a physician adept at reading information gained from an MRI or CAT scan and, the new medical techniques for treating the damage. Techniques I observed while visiting a loved one in a trauma intensive care unit earlier this year, I compared notes with an experienced neurosurgeon. The surgeon knew exactly what I saw three decades ago in the ICU following a similar trauma – not much.
Back in the 1970s the hospital called the room ICU, but it was devoid of any the paraphernalia and electrical equipment in a modern ICU. The nurse regularly checked on the patient’s vital signs, but literally had to walk into the room to see her patient. No glass walls insured visual contact of a silent patient even from a distance. I sat with the patient for hours by myself uninterrupted by the staff or monitoring devices.
This year, the same sort of injury mandated a room overflowing with equipment. The patient laid very still but the room flowed with activity day and night.
Skipping over all the technical terms, the patient wore equipment to increase and measure oxygen flow and monitor the patient’s personal contribution to the intake and output. One machine gathered information from a surgical procedure to monitor internal reactions and possible damage from the accident. Another machine dispensed medicine to maintain a healing sleep mode, IVs dripped in sustenance and antibiotics. Overhead a complicated digital read-out tracked vital signs and could be changed to other modes to track other information, give summaries of the patient’s vital signs and send out caution warnings if the machine even thought a problem might be developing or a high alarm to staff in the ward for situations demanding immediate attention.
Specially trained technicians stopped in the room regularly to check the patient’s vital sign, the equipment, activity readings and to make any adjustments necessary.
One morning I watched as one nurse spend 45 minutes did routine work checking read-outs, administering medication and adjusting equipment on our patient. Fortunately, as an ICU nurse, she only had one other patient to monitor and could us other staff to come help if necessary.
Walking around the bed required a certain agility to avoid the wires and tubes attached to the patient – and the bed. And what a super smart bed it was. It kept track of the general weight in the bed – when the patient left the bed for a test a red light came on to notify the staff of the absence. On my first day in the ICU, as I stood over the comatose patient, I took a second look as the person’s chest rose higher than I expected. The bed made it happen. It undulated and rolled gently back and forth – stimulating breathing and reducing bed sores. When the doctors added pneumonia as one of the symptoms, the bed did its part to loosen the phlegm. At the nurse’s command it shook and vibrated the still resting body with an astounding vigor.
Once past the crucial 48 hours, an MRI found a stable neck – the cervical collar could be removed. For the next couple days, with reduced medication, physical improvement and stabilization in the patient, the machines and their accompanying noises left the room one by one allowing the patient to wake up, begin breathing independently and move to the rehabilitation unit. A move that would not have happened without the blessing of medical intervention.
Yep, I have a lot to be thankful for this year and it begins with the use of modern technology sustaining a loved one’s life following a serious accident.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)