What you should know before you need a ventilator

We are going through some challenges as Coronavirus spreads all over the world.It makes sense for us to be braced and have knowledge on best approaches to help our body fight the virus, in case it will be needed. We put together several informations and research content about supplements that can help fighting virus infections for you.

Day by day the number of Covid-19 deaths raises and more and more people are afraid that them or their loved ones might get sick. In serious cases breathing becomes really hard, that ventilators have to be used to keep patients alive. It is horrifying that there might be not enough of those machines for everyone. Many people don’t know how ventilators work and how it could help them.

Knowledge will make us less afraid.

Do you know how breathing works? When you take a breath, air is pulled through your windpipe. This pipe then branches in two, then again into smaller and smaller pipes finally ending in tiny tubes across called bronchioles. At the very end of each are clusters of microscopic sacs called alveoli. Because the lining of each sac is thin, air floats through them into the red blood cells. These millions of sacs are so gentle, that a healthy lung has almost no substance. But Covid-19 changes all that. It causes a gummy yellow fluid to fill the air sacs, stopping the free flow of oxygen. If only a few air sacs are filled, the rest of the lung takes over. When more and more sacs are filled, the lung texture changes.

Health care workers are specially trained, so they can insert a 10-inch-long tube connected to the ventilator through the mouth and into the windpipe. The pressure of the machine is high enough to open up the stiffened lungs and deliver oxygen into the lungs. Ventilators keep oxygen going to the brain, the heart and the kidneys. This buys us plenty of time. All while we hope the infection will ease, and the lungs will begin to improve and work again. Sadly, these machines can’t fix the terrible damage the virus is causing, and if the virus erupts, the lungs will get even stiffer, as hard as a stale marshmallow.

Doctors are left with impossible choices. Too much oxygen poisons the air sacs, worsening the lung damage, but too little oxygen damages the brain and kidneys. Too much air pressure damages the lung, but too little means the oxygen can’t get in. Covid-19 patients are put into a medically induced coma before being placed on a ventilator. They do not suffer, but they cannot talk to us. Those who were lucky enough to leave the hospital alive after suffering acute respiratory distress syndrome, recovery can take months or years. The amount of sedation needed for Covid 19 patients can cause profound complications, damaging muscles and nerves, making it hard for those who survive to walk, move or even think as well as they did before they became ill.

We have to ask ourselves some serious questions:

What do I value about my life?
Will I die if I am not put in a medical coma and placed on a ventilator / do I want that life support?
If I do choose to be placed on a ventilator, how far do I want to go?
Do I want to continue on the machine if my kidneys shut down?

Right now, all over the country, patients and their families are being asked to make these difficult decisions at a moment’s notice, while they are on the verge of dying, breathless and terrified.

If patients get worse after being put on a ventilator, critical care doctors are having to ask their family members what they want done. Covid-19 is too contagious to have these conversations in person, so they are being done over the phone. It is yet another heartbreaking reality of dying during a pandemic. Patients cannot tell us what they want. Family members aren’t able to be with patients and may not know what they would want. No one can make these choices for us, and no one will know what choices we would make unless we tell them.