ben_vito

ICU doctor here, I don't get a chance to often see how survivors are doing years down the road. It looks like not only were you on a breathing machine, but based on that picture they had you on a lung bypass machine (ECMO) so you were as close to death as anyone could be.

How have you been doing psychologically since the event? Do you have any issues with PTSD, depression, anxiety? Do you feel there's been any affects on your memory or cognition?

Glad you got better and I think you can retrain your lungs and body with time. There are pulmonary rehab programs out there, ask your pulmonologist about them. If you have any questions I'm also happy to answer them in return.

Being a male FA is one of the smartest career choices a straight man could make.

I asked because we know a lot of detail on how people do IN the ICU, and how many survive, what their organ function is like etc. What we don't know a lot about is how people do from the point of view of mental health or if they have any cognitive deficits, etc. Also I'm curious how they do from an overall quality of life perspective. There's a term called post-ICU syndrome that is starting to get a lot of interest.

Here's an ELI5: Some people have an extraordinarily and inappropriately aggressive immune response to infection and injury. Take someone with that predisposition, then expose them to a particularly nasty virus or bacteria, and you get a condition called ARDS.

That inflammatory response causes the lining around their lungs to break down and leak fluid, and the lungs fill up with fluid. It then becomes incredibly difficult to get oxygen into the bloodstream, or to inflate the lungs with air. In the most extreme cases, nothing we do is able to get oxygen into the blood, and we have to consider using a system called ECMO, which diverts blood from the body and through an artificial lung, then back into the body.

For long term complications, the aggressive inflammation that happens in the lungs during ARDS eventually can lead to significant scar formation. The lungs become permanently stiff which makes it difficult to expand and exchange gas. Instead of fluid in the original case, the barrier becomes scar tissue.

Glad you're doing well! A friend of mine was in ICU with meningitis and also seems to be doing well in the long-term. Have you ever gone back to visit the ICU? I know I enjoy when a patient I looked after does come back, because we do rarely get to see the real person on the other side.