This may be the most difficult and cathartic thing I have ever written:

They say the first thing you notice when you enter the ICU is the smell of disinfectant and cleaners but that isn't true. In fact the air is so cold and dry and filtered that there is almost no smell at all.

What you do notice is the silence broken by occasional beeps and chimes of the myriad machines monitoring  the patients, and the soothing whoosh of the ventilators maintaining their breathing. these patients are surrounded by more technology than the first Apollo moon rockets. Medical science is so advanced that you have to wonder if you are doing the right thing by applying all this tech  to sustain a life beyond it's natural end.

I look toward your room and stop to wash my hands, don a gown and mask assisted by your personal nurse and speak with him or her about your day. I can guess in advance how your day was, you're in a medically induced coma so you do not fight against the ventilator tube or feeding tubes keeping you alive. I watch as they provide a "sedation vacation" every shift to determine if you can breathe without the ventilator, so far you have failed on every  attempt. What kind of life is this?

You didn't have the foresight to prepare a living will to determine just how far the health care providers will go to preserve your life and they are employing every  weapon in their arsenal to keep you alive, my input is ignored .

I talk to you and read you passages from your favorite series of books, Twilight (I know right?) but there is never any response. You occasionally  open your eyes or pull at your restraints but the MDs say these  reactions are involuntary and don't mean anything, I choose to think otherwise. 

I wait day after day hoping for the moment when you will fight back from wherever you are and either give up and go on to your well deserved rest or come back and re-join the living. 

Either way I will be here waiting for you, happy with either decision.

 

Tears in my eyes

MjrF