Well we planted 4 patients in the space of 48 hours. If you think that's a rough sentence or indiscriminate in terms of the loose delivery, yeah it is.
The people I hold myself accountable to are the patients first, and then trying to defer from second guessing to all of the rest...
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The Clouds are changing ...
Well we planted 4 patients in the space of 48 hours. If you think that’s a rough sentence or indiscriminate in terms of the loose delivery, yeah it is.
The people I hold myself accountable to are the patients first, and then trying to defer from second guessing to all of the rest...
I really don’t know if there was a last day. There were so many times I gazed at the face that seemed to outlast expectations and remain recoverable- there was so much time agonizing the muscle requirements a young man so large could could push our membrane oxygenator to such limits-
What he never knew was that he never stretched the limitations or determination of the Nurses, Doctors, and Perfusionists that watched and managed him 24/7 for 16 days.
All of that time to prepare to save a man named Samson- so little time to recover from the suggestion of a loss and the sudden end of so many phone calls for assistance.
Gone are days of literature searches and comparisons to "South Australian" or native "Michigan" "Studies" that typically seem to be the direction one takes when cornered by the realization that "hope" has become the last dash of salt as an avenue for medical salvation.
The bedrock of this storm was the 30- 53 percentile of predicted mortality that would be the end result- depending on which study you took more seriously.
Eliminated was a statue. A 25 year old Hispanic man who was dropped to his knees- but never leveled.
We survive him, but our effort survives us.
15 Days...
What is great about a good night’s sleep, is that you awake unblemished as of yet from whatever it was you are bound to reap for the day. There was a harvest to be made, and it was to be a long Friday.
An impending soiree’ with doom is syrup for hope and denial, and on this day, this Friday, a Titan passes.
It all happened very quickly. On a November Friday hope abounded like a prism of sunlight stabbing through the Grey mist of a withering southeast typhoon- and there were so many rain drops aligned with that process. Countless names in this equation allowed for a momentary buffer from worry, and had dangled a very tired suggestion of hope. Clinical weariness was translated to a pitt-bull doggedness of refusing to surrender.
On a November Friday- hope was outlasted..
And then death pure and simple. The simplicity of a phone call when the unhoped for answer is the first thing you listen to and you hang up the phone mid afternoon trying to recapture the last vestige of sleep.
With the phone went Samson.
That was the end.
God Bless You...