I CAN'T BREATHE

The great thing about rotating at different hospital sites is that every institution provides a different perspective of patient care.  After finishing up my main institution inpatient block, I switched over to the VA Hospital intensive care unit (ICU). Perhaps it is the specific population of veterans, but I found the patients to be particularly interesting characters. 

Of course on one of our busier days, I came across a very agitated patient who was coming down from a recent substance abuse episode. He was brought to the ICU because of respiratory distress. 

The nurses kept coming in to tell me about the patient turning blue, but whenever I came to see the patient, he would always calm down quickly. We would revisit our conversation a few minutes prior, and he would agree with it. Primarily, he kept screaming about how he couldn't breathe and how he was suffocating.

Generally, if someone is screaming at you, their breathing is probably doing okay. 

I walked out of the room not for a few seconds before he starts screaming about how he couldn't deal with the breathing mask on his face. I rush in and see that he's shrieking about his anxiety and claustrophobia.

"I can't breathe! How can you tell me to put this mask on my face! It's suffocating me! How would you like it if someone forced air down your throat!" 

"Sir, I know we just talked about our plan, and we won't be putting the mask on you anymore, remember?" 

"Then WHY CAN'T I BREATHE! THE MASK IS ON MY FACE!" 

At this point, I point to the mask next to him that's turned off. "Sir, look to your left. The mask is right there. It's not on you."

He immediately calms down. "Oh. ... Oh, I thought, I thought it was on me."

He blubbers around for a while, but this occurred a few more times for the rest of the day. Eventually, we took the breathing machine out of the room entirely to ease his nerves.

That's it. I don't have much reflection for this doodle. I just found it interesting. We see a lot of patients screaming about how they can't breathe, but this was definitely the most interesting one to me.