the saddest room in the ICU

Room number 9 is usually dark and a little chili. Although in the middle of a busy intensive care unit, it is surprisingly calm. A clean smell comes out its door, and the windows are half shut. Mozart's 21st concerto is playing calmly, very appropriately at the Andante chapter. It is the room of Mr. K, and it holds the questionable title of being the saddest room in the ICU.

Mr. K had a seizure disorder and a dad. The three of them lived in a small place far from anywhere. Dad was sick and K took care of him, but he didn't want to take care of his seizure disorder.
"Take your pills", dad said to his only son, but K was a big guy who didn't want to, for reasons we will never know. I am wondering what he sounded like. Did he have one of those deep voices? Did he have a Spanish accent?

One day dad came back and found K on the floor. Being disabled, it took him a while to get to a phone, but even that didn't matter much - with the nearest hospital 70 miles away, Mr. K was clearly having odds against him, and since that moment of being found unresponsive by dad he remained so. A quick imaging survey done at a hospital revealed he had a very bad stroke and also, for whatever reason that we will never know, he broke his neck.

And he has been here ever since. At first we hoped that he would get better. Every day I would check his Glasgow Coma Score, pinch him here and there, and ask him to blink his only open eye. But he would move his eyes randomly across the room and not quite follow my orders.

Maybe he IS seeing things, but just things I myself cannot see. Maybe he is alive and alert, but in a different world. Our minds are our souls are our hearts, and they are full of wonderful, magnificent worlds. Maybe he does exist on one of them, chewing on a freshly picked mango or dancing a tribal dance with a well developed mulatto.

But we are not seeing it here, on our part of the world. we just see Mr K lying there in his dark room, listening to Mozart.

Nurse R likes Mozart. She is a round, very talented ICU nurse that likes to work nights. "Too many people around during the day", she says. She is taking care of Mr. K, and figured that since he is not moving and most of the time stares at the ceiling with his one eye, he might as well listen to some good quality music. If he is not a fan, he will be by the time she is through with him. Stranger things have happened in the ICU, believe me.

In the meantime she is taking care of his ventilating machine, recording his heart rate, giving him medications, and counting exactly how much he peed. I recognize her hand writing by now, and she is the only nurse that would write the patient had peed 1500.35 milliliter during the day. She is quite thorough.

Until yesterday Mr. K was CMO, which is a clean word for a dirty meaning - Comfort Measures Only. So we only need to keep Mr. K comfortable, until he dies. For example, give him pain medicine. This was in agreement with his dad, which never comes to visit.

I really hate CMOs, and I didn't think Mr. K deserved it. First, he was moving his eyes! (ok, eye). Now that can be a meaningful thing. If you haven't seen the film "The butterfly and the diving bell", now would be a good time to do so. Second, he was on sedating medications, which might make him even worse than he really is. Third, he broke his neck! So we can't quite expect him to move his 4 limbs now can we? And fourth, he is still recovering from his injury... Maybe, perhaps, he would be better once his injuries healed a little?

As crazy as it may sound, sometimes Mr. K's quiet little room, with his Mozart and devoted nurse R feels to me like an island of sanity in our crazy ICU. I sure will miss him when he leaves, wherever that might be, and wish him lots of fun and light with his mangoes and dancing mulattoes.