My dad ended up in the ICU with influenza B, pneumonia and sepsis 45 days ago. The recovery isn’t over. He moved to a third step in medical care yesterday, a facility that will help him learn to eat again. He also has to learn to stand, and walk and brush his teeth. Being in bed for 45 days takes away those basic living skills. The happiest news for him today is that he got to take a shower and wear one of his own shirts.
The piece in this that has been most difficult and shocking to our family has been the ICU-related delirium. It’s something we didn’t know about before this happened. The extreme medical interventions that saved his life caused his brain to become disordered.
The photo above was right after he ripped out an IV because he didn’t understand where he was or what was going on. He had to be restrained for his own safety. He shared fantastical stories about being on boats or on airplanes. There were a lot of “bad guys” and plots. He told us the cat was sleeping under his bed and the clock on the wall was strange because it had 13 hours instead of 12. There was no concept of time. He would say he hadn’t slept in six weeks, or talk about a car he bought last year, in 1960. He tried to use my mom’s hand as a cell phone and he wanted us to write down the “third address.”
ICU delirium hasn’t been studied extensively yet, and the best treatment is probably time. My mom, who has been at the hospital with him every day, spent hours talking to him about normal things while he talked as though he was narrating wild dreams. It was alarming, even though the doctors and nurses all said it was “normal.”
BTW, my mom has superhero powers to be able to be with him for hours each day, and sometimes all night.
Read more about ICU delirium experiences here.
There are still months to go in his recovery. Hard to believe it all started with the flu.
Peace to all the families who weren’t so fortunate to see their loved ones survive influenza.
~Debbie