In a recent ER<\/i> episode, a teenage kid with a degenerative neuromuscular condition is brought in to the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors prepare to put him on a ventilator, but the kid refuses, stating that he doesn’t want to live the rest of his life dependent on a machine. The kid persuades one of the docs to support his decision and the kid dies. <\/p>\n
When it came time for me to be put on a vent, I was in similar dire straits: deathly ill with pneumonia and semiconscious because of the elevated CO2 in my bloodstream. I remember a team of doctors filing into my hospital room and matter-of-factly informing me and my mom that I needed to be intubated. I remember freaking out and starting to cry, but I must’ve blacked out because the next thing I knew, I was in the ICU with a tube down my throat. <\/p>\n
In the couple years leading up to that day, my hometown pediatrician tried repeatedly to have a conversation with me about what life with a ventilator might be like, but I kept blowing him off because I didn’t want to think about it. Looking back, the transition might have been a little easier if I’d known what to expect. And I probably would have still chosen the ventilator under less urgent circumstances. Even at thirteen, I was fairly certain I didn’t believe in God and I wasn’t ready for nothingness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a recent ER episode, a teenage kid with a degenerative neuromuscular condition is brought in to the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia. The doctors prepare to put him on a ventilator, but the kid refuses, stating that he doesn’t want to live the rest of his life dependent on a machine. The […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-sc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}