Just sharing my first experience with ICU

So no one I know has asthma and I have no one to share this experience with. And I know many people go through worse but for me this was quite frightening. I'm not sure I expect anyone to be concerned about reading this or replying, but I would love to hear some other's stories. So here we go..

I was admitted to the ICU due to my asthma attack, and for the first time ever, standard treatments just weren't cutting the backbone of the attack. (And it was my first time in an ICU.)

I was on the bipap for about 26 hours and I started using that to compensate for how much I couldn't breathe anymore due to the muscle strain around my chest, and clearly the doctors began realising that I was tiring.

The doctor sat next to my bed and said if my breathing didn't improve in the next 20 min or if it got any worse he'd either go to giving me intravenous ketamine or intubation.

I was so scared because I first thought: 'Give me all the meds! I'm not getting intubated!', then his second comment made me even more terrified as he said 'ketamine can cause hallucinations, vomiting and sometimes anger and agitation, so we're just in a bit of a difficult place about what to do next.' I think it honestly made my breathing worse because the last thing I want is to be hallucinating in the ICU. And by that point I was thinking, 'Give me all the tubes!' But he gave my a friendly pat on the head and said, 'but don't stress, we're the ICU and we only want to do the best for you, and we won't do anything without consulting your parents.'

But it also made me think: is that even a standard procedure? I'm also only 17 as well. I'd understand if a patient was much older.

By this point I'd already been given: tons of nebs through the bipap (which had salbutamol and atrovent), IV adrenaline, IV magnesium sulphate, IV potassium (because of the effects of salbutamol), IV prednisolone, my phosphates were dropping and my blood gases were quite far off norm. My blood pressure dropped to 79/30 as well. And my heart rate sat around 170. Basically I was ready to retire from breathing because I was so tired, but at the same time the bipap was compensating for the most part of what I couldn't do anymore.

The nurses spoke to me today (2 days later) about how they were all convinced I was going to be intubated. One of them even said she was low-key hoping I would be, out of sympathy, because it would've given me sleep and my muscles a rest.

I'm now out of the ICU and in the ward as of today.

I have 14 injection points of IV's in my wrists/hands because my veins and arteries were simply hopeless! They had to stitch some of them in because they kept falling out (or hopeless me accidentally ripping them out, but to be fair that only happened once). Even one of my vein collapsed! They had to use ultrasound imaging to gain access to my arteries because the procedure of putting in the IV blood pressure monitor was helplessly failing!

Anyway, probably a completely boring post, but I don't think there was anyone else to share my story with, and sometimes it's nice to share these things with people.

Hopefully there's some other stories y'all have to share as well, because I'd be interested to read some.

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