VENTILATOR
sess my life. So I went on a driving tour.
I drove to Port Aransas in my convertible to celebrate Thanksgiving with my daughters, Olivia and Isabel. It was wondrous. The usual fog of the Coastal Bend that time of year. The two of them, now grown women, same dark hair flitting around the beach just as it did when they were little girls. Me staring at them, them staring at the otters at the Texas State Aquarium. Then we split up and I left for California where my buddy, Jeff, and I went to the beach and I saw whales at a distance. I turned east again and stopped at the stucco house of my sister, Janet, in Phoenix. And then it hit, crushing me like a tidal wave.
First, I couldn’t get out of bed. Then I couldn’t get off the couch. I couldn’t stop coughing. I couldn’t breathe and kept passing out. My sister put me in the car and drove me to an urgent care facility. Fever spiking, blood pressure rising, heart working overtime to overcome the drastic lack of oxygen, I agreed but started to pass out again.
In the emergency room, I wordlessly waved a “Do Not Resuscitate” order inscribed on a bracelet. The staff stared at my sister. At 52, I was a little young for a DNR, they pleaded. Finally, asphyxiating, I succumbed and motioned for them to give me the oxygen.
And that is all that I remember from lucid memory until six weeks later.
Once inside the ICU, I was pumped full of the anesthesia Propofol — the so-called Michael Jackson drug because it killed him. I was intubated
immediately which is more violent than it sounds. A tube which feels like a garden hose is shoved down your trachea to your lungs. Without being knocked out you would gag and choke on it.
In my interior world now, I woke aboard a Russian submarine, to which I had been consigned, in claustrophobic confinement. All of us were addicted to the same drug, rendering us immobile, in cramped quarters and sweaty. A pale, skeletal crew member hovered close but only to ramble about his pain and need for more drugs.
Not long after, I was thrust into a violent corner of a large city talking to my sister — who came daily to the hospital, of course. And yet I kept yielding to the violence unfolding in my head. I tried to protect her from gangs. But I couldn’t.
And then I found myself in a desolate, nearly empty West Texas town — it was a flashback of having to walk into Sierra Blanca at night after a tire blew on Interstate 10 long ago. In my dream, I walked into an empty bar and there were two old people and my sister. When I asked about everyone else, I realized my sister was killing everyone else in the town with a knife. So then I savagely killed her and burned the bar to the ground. Then I did it again.
After just 10 days, a doctor approached my sister, she later recalled. He said: “Your brother is a very sick man. There is not a lot of optimism.”
There was no waking from these hallucinations, which it turns out are common under this drug — now being used to treat COVID-19. I got a fleeting glimpse of a doctor who came to say hello each morning. He asked me if I knew my name and where I was. I kept saying something about New Mexico, stammering I’d pay cash now to be released.
For a brief time I fell in love with a beautiful nurse, still in New Mexico, in my mind. Whenever they pumped more drugs in me I saw a drip bag filled with margaritas and limes and a pounding filled my ears. It was just more Propofol. Later, I rowed a boat to the Yucatan to be with her. It seemed a relief. But soon the dream turned into more nightmares of violence and even mutilation.
Then I woke up. My birthday had come and gone. And yet, I was still out of my mind on drugs;
they were giving me morphine to step me down from Propofol. I managed to get to the restroom and the man who stared back was a ragged, gaunt, bearded and totally unfamiliar stranger, whose pupils were wide, dark and still terrified.
When my sister came to visit, I startled her, trying to scribble on a notepad: “I am a hostage. Get me out of here.” My brain was still seared with hallucinations. I lunged at her, terrifying her, growling: "You were supposed to let me die!"
Finally, the nurses restrained me — again. I remember my last morphine injection, which itself was being stepped down. I asked the nurse for a strong dose, not a weak one. He mercifully agreed. I slipped into a warm, deep sleep.
Next I knew, I awakened in a physical rehabilitation hospital, filled with people like me. I felt sorry for them. Most of them were elderly, far older than I, I learned, as I was taught to drive a wheelchair and then walk with a walker.
No longer intubated, I had a hole in my neck now, a tracheotomy, with a long tube connecting me to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day. Gradually, the view of what was real became stronger; but the memory of the hallucinations remained quite real. A psychologist told me I had PTSD and should seek treatment.
I learned to chew and they sealed the hole in my neck, though I still struggled to reach normal oxygen saturation levels. But I worked on it. One day, I sat in a day room alone wrapped in a blanket staring off into space. It was spring out there. At that very moment, the person who stepped off the elevator was none other than my former father-in -law. I was overwhelmingly happy to see him.
It turned out that while I was under I had seen quite a few people. I remembered my sister’s
visits, though she had appeared to me as a nurse. My daughters and former wife had come; I had no memory, sadly, of that. My youngest, Isabel, broke out in tears at seeing me. My oldest best friend, Luis, had come; I vaguely remember that. My friends, Erik, Steve, Mark. A short priest administered the last rites. My father had come, too, which I am happy to say I do recall. He died only a week after my discharge; I held him in my arms.
This is what is happening inside the minds of some COVID-19 patients now. Even the survivors are not magically or automatically healed. Many will suffer lasting physical after-effects. In my case, my lungs remained scarred from a bug that ate their insides. My kidneys failed, too, which is common with COVID-19; I emerged with diabetes from my coma.
I have a therapist but have not sought extensive help only because it’s expensive and not covered by my insurance. Instead, I have and continue to live with the experience. I cry sometimes for no reason. Thoughts of suicide are common. But with time, prayer and patience, I get by.
I recount these personal experiences because I worry that many of the victims of COVID-19 will experience similar horrors. The longer they are on a ventilator the more violent and graphic their hallucinations become. Please understand that going on a ventilator is not a good thing; it is a desperate attempt to save a human life. Many will not come through that experience alive. And those who do may never be the same.
I know. I died. Twice. And I came back to tell you what it’s like.
Parker, author of “Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America,” is a contributing columnist for the Houston Chronicle.