Intensive Care Unit
A typical emotional Bollywood film often opens with a scene outside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a hospital. The patient's relatives sit in the waiting aisle, bearing serious facial expressions. It is one of the most tense moments of the film. This climax scene usually decides the course of the story and the lives of the characters involved.
Interestingly the use of ICUs dates back to the 1800s, when Florence Nightingale, often referred to as the founder of modern nursing, created separate spaces for treating war soldiers with severe injuries. These soldiers were kept separate from the other war-impacted soldiers as they required special treatment and care. The ICU is a specialty facility of a hospital that cares for people who are not very stable in their health. These patients are usually suffering from serious, life-threatening illnesses. Hence, they require constant care and attention from a well-trained nursing force and doctors. This treatment is generally one-on-one unlike for the patients in the general ward.
Their bodily parameters are continuously monitored. A typical ICU is filled with several state-of-the-art, high-class instruments. When you have a closer look at it, the body seems like an experimental model to which several instruments are attached to create a working setup. One of the crucial components in this are the cardiac monitors. These are similar to ECGs and constantly monitor the heart activity- every heartbeat gets converted into an electrical signal which is amplified on a small screen next to the patient. Another one is a mechanical ventilator. The ventilator tube directly pushes air into the patient's lungs, through an invasion made through the windpipe and a ventilator mask attached to the mouth. Then there are syringes and infusion pumps that supply a constant dose of medication and liquid food to the patient. Again, the suction pumps, help remove liquid excretions generated by the body. As I said earlier, all of this looks like an experimental setup attached to a piece of flesh.
I had never felt the gravity of what the patient’s close relatives might be going through until I myself had to experience it. One has to go through extremely painful moments clouded with fear and doubt. But this pain is still nothing compared to what the patient might be going through. Having all those insertions made and tubes passing through various parts of the body must be so hurtful. For the doctors and nurses, the treatment is quite a routine procedure, but as someone related to the patient it's really tough to forebear and analyze what would happen next. And if the patient is unconscious (which is usually the case), then it's even more devoid of hope as all you have to look at are the lines on the ECG that show that the person is still alive.
This incident made me realize the impermanence of life. The moment when someone is at the threshold of death, struggling to get a breath of life, makes all the other events insignificant. Health is the most valuable asset and taking it for granted is the biggest liability. Medical science has progressed tremendously. Health care is among the largest investing markets. It has improved the quality and efficiency of our lives multifold and helped eradicate several diseases. But good health is something that we need to create for ourselves. The right amount of work, good rest, active exercise, a healthy, junk-free diet, and learning to declutter the mind from unnecessary thoughts, little stuff, and toxic emotions are a few things that might work for good health. In the end, it's about having a healthy body and a free mind to live a happy life.
