Intensive Care

A poem about critical care / intensive care

The wisdom of knowing what keeps you afloat and what will drown you — I work full-time in a busy intensive care unit in California. I feel privileged to practice medicine in the ICU, where the sickest of the sick are offered a chance to improve and recover. Sadly, a significant number do not get better. …

I got the call I had been practicing to receive for a while. Yes, I practiced. It came from Sgt. Sosa of the Sugar Land PD. That is not who I thought would call me, but I was prepared. I listened to him tell me, “I’m sorry to inform you…

This review of Every Deep Drawn Breath by Wes Ely MD appeared in The DO Magazine online. When Wes Ely started as a resident headed for a career in critical care medicine, he encountered one of his first intensive care unit (ICU) patients who survived her near-death experience but was…

So it’s been a while. I last wrote in April last year, nearly a whole year ago now. I haven’t written partly because I wrote my master’s dissertation instead, and partly because I didn’t quite know how to put work into words. The temptation just to rant and vent was…

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” — Lao Tzu So, how did it all begin? In short, I went to the University of California of San Diego, for my undergraduate degree in biology and followed up with a masters degree in applied physiology and biophysics at…

Acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS is a condition that has been most frequently seen in the MICU. The classic presentation is respiratory failure with b/l lung white out requiring intubation from severe sepsis or drowning and most recently, COVID-19 Pneumonia. However, I have increasingly seen more ARDS patients in…

Who am I to say what lies between worlds — In the waiting area I had absent mindedly picked up a children’s book sitting on the table. It was a copy of Love you Forever. I began to cry unconsolably, thinking of all the times I had read that book to my son. It was a favourite. He was in…