Week 6

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So with carnival over, it was back to the hospital. It was pretty quiet, as I guess everyone was too busy with carnival to get sick.

There was a sad case in the ICU though. A 29 year old man had a congenital heart problem, which gave him a heart attack at work. No one knows how long he was unconscious for before a work colleague found him on the floor. The colleagues called an ambulance, but they thought that they felt a pulse, so no one did any CPR until the paramedics arrived 20 minutes later. When he was brought to A&E they continued CPR for an hour before he came around. But now, he is a vegetable. Just 8 minutes without oxygen causes permanent brain damage, and he had over 20 minutes before any CPR even started. So now he can breathe by himself, although can't swallow so needs constant suction, but he can't talk, can't move, probably has very little awareness of what's going on. He has redeveloped his newborn reflexes (very bad sign of brain damage) and almost constantly has seizures. He had partial seizures constantly whilst we were there, and one full seizure which lasted a minute or so. He's on two different anti-seizure medications, but it isn't helping. He has developed a fever, but they don't think there's an infection, his brain just can't control his body temperature any more. He will never recover more than this and it was really horrible to see.



So that was my day.

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