TRIP 3, JOURNAL #2

We had a new “success story” over the past week. A man in his early 50s who’s been in and out of our ICU was finally starting to improve. He’s been hospitalized for COVID for about two months straight. He’s been in ICU thrice throughout his hospital course; I’ve had him for both of his return trips. He came back to us because he had to be intubated for a third time. He went for a tracheostomy four days ago and he improved dramatically when we were able to reduce his sedation post-trach. He’s awake now, is completely cognitively intact, is off blood pressure support medications, and looks likely to make enough of a recovery to discharge to a long-term care setting. My guess is that he’ll be on a ventilator for the rest of his life, but he’ll probably live.

I learned this weekend that one of my colleagues is a fellow acrobat (and a considerably more skilled one than I am, at that). He’s more of a partner acrobat, which I’ve not done much of (as my own solo skills are pretty sketchy), but we decided to try a simple, short trick. He had my shoulders on his feet and I basically did a headstand with my shoulders balanced on his feet. We were going to try to convert that pose into a handstand, but the ceilings were barely high enough for the headstand version, so we couldn’t. The nurses allowed us to open the tent flap of the patient described above and do a brief performance for him. Then we did an encore round for the only other patient who was awake on the unit — a nice old man with Down syndrome who had also recently been extubated. (He was awake and seemed to enjoy it.)

Thus, the COVID Circus was born. We were able to practice but didn’t have a chance to perform for any patients the following night (they blessedly slept through most of the night), so we made a pact to do a new trick every shift we work together and hopefully do a brief show for the awake patients nightly. It’s totally frivolous and silly, but these people have been through hell and it takes perhaps 15 minutes to brighten their day. The nurses love it, too, and to be fair they’ve likewise been through hell. We even got a couple of the other PAs to try it. One was brave enough to try the partner headstand with spotters. A couple of other PAs who have never tried a handstand gave it a try with spotting and instruction, too. The videos of our stunts have spread around the hospital. Nurses on other units have been asking to see more tricks or other videos from my circus escapades prior to COVID. It’s nice to have a little joy on shift for a change of pace.