not an endorsement posted:

if the filter portion were placed differently i think this looks v cool tbh

D1E posted:

SERIOUS QUESTION:

Would Killary be a better candidate than Bidet at this point?

Spoondick posted:

nobody fucks with a person wearing a balaclava

Goon Boots posted:

lol, besides the miraculous decrease, why is the uncertainty so high? Peak usage could be between 100k and 350k beds? But after that, we know for sure it's going down and will end by July. lol.

AppleNippleBOB posted:

upgunned shitpost posted:

wearing a mopp suit 24/7 cuz I love the smell of my balls

dew worm posted:

where are y’all getting masks from?

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

the horny gun posters are here too shoot the tiny lil grease ball virus into smithereens

facetoucher cat posted:

https://twitter.com/NorbertElekes/status/1244806943572623360

MadJackal posted:

Writing sort of took a left turn tonight. All based on today's events though.

Honestly, think I'm going to rewrite that one tomorrow to focus on the Code Blue today.

It was relaxing to be more creative than usual.

AppleNippleBOB posted:

quote:

A coronavirus outbreak has infected dozens of Marine recruits and staff members at the service's East Coast recruit training center, prompting the suspension of additional arrivals for the foreseeable future, defense officials said Monday.

AppleNippleBOB posted:

Let's go

MadJackal posted:

Day 8

“We’re going to need to start making decisions on who gets care, and no one is stepping up. No one wants to cross that line."

“I don’t want to go this way.”


The Story of You

You're a reasonably healthy guy in your mid 50s.

Sure, you had a health scare when you were in your mid 30s, a pretty big scare come to think of it. You had some chest pain whenever you worked too hard and went to a heart doctor and after a bunch of tests wound up getting some kind of mesh tube in your heart. Or something. Doesn't matter. You see your heart doctor every year and he tells you you're fine. Maybe lose a couple pounds. Here's a pill you should take for your blood pressure. Maybe you know the name of it, maybe you don't. But you still see your heart doctor, even two decades later, because you want to be healthy.

Your other doctor worries about your sugars. He tells you to take a different pill. Metformin. You know that one's name. Your other doctor also tells you to lose some weight. And he says he doesn't like how high this blood test number is. But you feel fine. It doesn't hurt like the chest pain you had.

Maybe you work at a gas station. Maybe you're a public notary, doesn't matter. You're definitely blue collar. Hair's thinning and mostly grey, you keep it buzzed pretty close to the scalp. You haven't shaven for the past week or so it seems, because you got sick.

You come down with the flu. Fevers that leave you sweating and chills that put you under the extra blankets you keep on the top shelf of your closet. You don't take a temperature though. You just feel awful. And the cough keeps you up at night. You're not coughing up any goo though, so that's good. Right?

You put up with it for a week. The fevers aren't going away. What's more worrying is that it's getting harder to breathe. Not the kind of hard to breathe when you had your heart issue, no, this is taking the wind from you when you walk the length of your room to go take a wiz. So you overcome your stubbornness and go to an Urgent Care.

This new doctor says he doesn't like the sound of your lungs and orders a chest Xray. Your new doctor says you have pneumonia and gives you two more pills to take. Antibiotics. They'll help you start breathing better again.

But you don't start breathing better. And the fevers only go away for a little when you take Tylenol. And you're having to breathe faster now even in bed. You wait three more days, taking the antibiotics which were supposed to fix you, until you're scared enough to head to the Emergency Room. Because you can't breathe.

You're seen by the first new doctor in the afternoon. The nurses put some tubing under your nose and now you don't have to breathe so hard. He's wearing a lot of stuff your other doctors never wore. It's hard to hear him as he speaks through two masks. He probably says something about that virus that’s going around. The COVID virus. And you're shocked because you thought it was the flu, and you haven't been around any sick people. You don't know where you got it from.

Four hours later a different doctor comes by (also wearing a lot of masks and a yellow dress) and says you're heading upstairs. He asks you even more questions. By this time, you had to switch to a face mask to get enough oxygen to breathe ok.

You spend the night in the hospital. You're woken up at 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, and 5AM for a nurse to come take your vitals. If you take your mask off for even a minute, you feel like you've just run up 2 flights of stairs.

Your newest doctors (there's a few of them) wake you up around 8AM. They listen to your lungs, look at the monitor next to your bed that beeps sometimes, and frown. You can tell even under the masks. They say you're going to get different pills. One of them isn't usually used to treat the COVID, but you're desperate to breathe and you agree to it.

Your nurse keeps coming into your room to check your monitor a few times in an hour. You're breathing just as fast as you were at home, even with the mask of oxygen on.

Suddenly there's a lot of talk outside your room. Maybe you can make it out over the sound of the whooshing air into the mask and your own breathing, maybe not. Doesn't matter.

If you were listening, you'd hear an anesthesiologist asking why he was called stat to the room when a decision hasn't been made yet to intubate or not. (Intubate. Do you know what that word means?) You hear a different doctor ask why they weren't called earlier to first evaluate the patient before the anesthesiologist was called. After a minute or two you see a tall doctor enter your room, again with the masks, and the yellow dress.

Things start to move faster now.

He speaks quickly but seemingly without worry in his voice. "How are you feeling?" (Did he even pause to introduce himself? You can't remember.) You answer in clipped words. "It's not hard to breathe," you say, "but I just can't catch my breath."

He explains that your oxygen is too low despite the mask. And he says the only way to help you keep breathing is to stick a plastic tube down your throat and hook you up to a machine. He explains you'll be asleep while it's in. You agree, because why the hell wouldn't you?

He exits just as quickly as he came in. Again, if you're listening closely, outside the door you hear him say to some people you can't see, "We don’t need to intubate in the room, we've got a good five or ten minutes before he goes south. Get him to the sick you."

You probably didn’t hear that last thing right.

You're rolled out of your room in your stretcher to an elevator. You go up and are wheeled into a busy room of other people in beds but with tubes down their throats, with only drapes to separate them, filled with dozens of people in yellow dresses and masks and plastic windshields on their face. There's more of those same dings and bells you heard from your own monitor, but they're all over the room echoing off the floors and walls and ceiling.

Another doctor says you're going to go to sleep. You look scared. You don’t ask any questions, you just keep breathing. The monitor behind you keeps dinging.

You don't even realize they pushed the medicine into your veins in the two seconds it takes for you to stop feeling or hearing anything.

…

Maybe you remember being in a fog as the medicine wore off a little. Maybe. You choke on the thing in your throat. Your eyes well up. Then you go back to sleep less than a minute later when you're given more medicine. You hope you don’t remember that.

Now you're wherever we go when we sleep.

You hope you wake up.

MadJackal posted:

Writing sort of took a left turn tonight. All based on today's events though.

Honestly, think I'm going to rewrite that one tomorrow to focus on the Code Blue today.

It was relaxing to be more creative than usual.

BULBASAUR posted:

about to do a grocery run

wish me luck fellow STALKERS

Jon Irenicus posted:

drove around a bit in my car to get gas and just not be inside

I spend so much of my goddamned life commuting in that thing and working from home makes my brain go "car fun now"

Salt Fish posted:

Yeah, it should go in the front, and also be shaped like a crow's beak.

MadJackal posted:

Writing sort of took a left turn tonight. All based on today's events though.

Honestly, think I'm going to rewrite that one tomorrow to focus on the Code Blue today.

It was relaxing to be more creative than usual.

MadJackal posted:

Day 8

“We’re going to need to start making decisions on who gets care, and no one is stepping up. No one wants to cross that line."

“I don’t want to go this way.”


The Story of You

You're a reasonably healthy guy in your mid 50s.

Sure, you had a health scare when you were in your mid 30s, a pretty big scare come to think of it. You had some chest pain whenever you worked too hard and went to a heart doctor and after a bunch of tests wound up getting some kind of mesh tube in your heart. Or something. Doesn't matter. You see your heart doctor every year and he tells you you're fine. Maybe lose a couple pounds. Here's a pill you should take for your blood pressure. Maybe you know the name of it, maybe you don't. But you still see your heart doctor, even two decades later, because you want to be healthy.

Your other doctor worries about your sugars. He tells you to take a different pill. Metformin. You know that one's name. Your other doctor also tells you to lose some weight. And he says he doesn't like how high this blood test number is. But you feel fine. It doesn't hurt like the chest pain you had.

Maybe you work at a gas station. Maybe you're a public notary, doesn't matter. You're definitely blue collar. Hair's thinning and mostly grey, you keep it buzzed pretty close to the scalp. You haven't shaven for the past week or so it seems, because you got sick.

You come down with the flu. Fevers that leave you sweating and chills that put you under the extra blankets you keep on the top shelf of your closet. You don't take a temperature though. You just feel awful. And the cough keeps you up at night. You're not coughing up any goo though, so that's good. Right?

You put up with it for a week. The fevers aren't going away. What's more worrying is that it's getting harder to breathe. Not the kind of hard to breathe when you had your heart issue, no, this is taking the wind from you when you walk the length of your room to go take a wiz. So you overcome your stubbornness and go to an Urgent Care.

This new doctor says he doesn't like the sound of your lungs and orders a chest Xray. Your new doctor says you have pneumonia and gives you two more pills to take. Antibiotics. They'll help you start breathing better again.

But you don't start breathing better. And the fevers only go away for a little when you take Tylenol. And you're having to breathe faster now even in bed. You wait three more days, taking the antibiotics which were supposed to fix you, until you're scared enough to head to the Emergency Room. Because you can't breathe.

You're seen by the first new doctor in the afternoon. The nurses put some tubing under your nose and now you don't have to breathe so hard. He's wearing a lot of stuff your other doctors never wore. It's hard to hear him as he speaks through two masks. He probably says something about that virus that’s going around. The COVID virus. And you're shocked because you thought it was the flu, and you haven't been around any sick people. You don't know where you got it from.

Four hours later a different doctor comes by (also wearing a lot of masks and a yellow dress) and says you're heading upstairs. He asks you even more questions. By this time, you had to switch to a face mask to get enough oxygen to breathe ok.

You spend the night in the hospital. You're woken up at 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, and 5AM for a nurse to come take your vitals. If you take your mask off for even a minute, you feel like you've just run up 2 flights of stairs.

Your newest doctors (there's a few of them) wake you up around 8AM. They listen to your lungs, look at the monitor next to your bed that beeps sometimes, and frown. You can tell even under the masks. They say you're going to get different pills. One of them isn't usually used to treat the COVID, but you're desperate to breathe and you agree to it.

Your nurse keeps coming into your room to check your monitor a few times in an hour. You're breathing just as fast as you were at home, even with the mask of oxygen on.

Suddenly there's a lot of talk outside your room. Maybe you can make it out over the sound of the whooshing air into the mask and your own breathing, maybe not. Doesn't matter.

If you were listening, you'd hear an anesthesiologist asking why he was called stat to the room when a decision hasn't been made yet to intubate or not. (Intubate. Do you know what that word means?) You hear a different doctor ask why they weren't called earlier to first evaluate the patient before the anesthesiologist was called. After a minute or two you see a tall doctor enter your room, again with the masks, and the yellow dress.

Things start to move faster now.

He speaks quickly but seemingly without worry in his voice. "How are you feeling?" (Did he even pause to introduce himself? You can't remember.) You answer in clipped words. "It's not hard to breathe," you say, "but I just can't catch my breath."

He explains that your oxygen is too low despite the mask. And he says the only way to help you keep breathing is to stick a plastic tube down your throat and hook you up to a machine. He explains you'll be asleep while it's in. You agree, because why the hell wouldn't you?

He exits just as quickly as he came in. Again, if you're listening closely, outside the door you hear him say to some people you can't see, "We don’t need to intubate in the room, we've got a good five or ten minutes before he goes south. Get him to the sick you."

You probably didn’t hear that last thing right.

You're rolled out of your room in your stretcher to an elevator. You go up and are wheeled into a busy room of other people in beds but with tubes down their throats, with only drapes to separate them, filled with dozens of people in yellow dresses and masks and plastic windshields on their face. There's more of those same dings and bells you heard from your own monitor, but they're all over the room echoing off the floors and walls and ceiling.

Another doctor says you're going to go to sleep. You look scared. You don’t ask any questions, you just keep breathing. The monitor behind you keeps dinging.

You don't even realize they pushed the medicine into your veins in the two seconds it takes for you to stop feeling or hearing anything.

…

Maybe you remember being in a fog as the medicine wore off a little. Maybe. You choke on the thing in your throat. Your eyes well up. Then you go back to sleep less than a minute later when you're given more medicine. You hope you don’t remember that.

Now you're wherever we go when we sleep.

You hope you wake up.

Harton posted:

Sup my axe brethren!



Truly the tool of the proletariat.

facetoucher cat posted:

Only if it's a water gun filled with Mr. Bubbles if so then it's on

MadJackal posted:

Day 8

“We’re going to need to start making decisions on who gets care, and no one is stepping up. No one wants to cross that line."

“I don’t want to go this way.”


The Story of You

You're a reasonably healthy guy in your mid 50s.

Sure, you had a health scare when you were in your mid 30s, a pretty big scare come to think of it. You had some chest pain whenever you worked too hard and went to a heart doctor and after a bunch of tests wound up getting some kind of mesh tube in your heart. Or something. Doesn't matter. You see your heart doctor every year and he tells you you're fine. Maybe lose a couple pounds. Here's a pill you should take for your blood pressure. Maybe you know the name of it, maybe you don't. But you still see your heart doctor, even two decades later, because you want to be healthy.

Your other doctor worries about your sugars. He tells you to take a different pill. Metformin. You know that one's name. Your other doctor also tells you to lose some weight. And he says he doesn't like how high this blood test number is. But you feel fine. It doesn't hurt like the chest pain you had.

Maybe you work at a gas station. Maybe you're a public notary, doesn't matter. You're definitely blue collar. Hair's thinning and mostly grey, you keep it buzzed pretty close to the scalp. You haven't shaven for the past week or so it seems, because you got sick.

You come down with the flu. Fevers that leave you sweating and chills that put you under the extra blankets you keep on the top shelf of your closet. You don't take a temperature though. You just feel awful. And the cough keeps you up at night. You're not coughing up any goo though, so that's good. Right?

You put up with it for a week. The fevers aren't going away. What's more worrying is that it's getting harder to breathe. Not the kind of hard to breathe when you had your heart issue, no, this is taking the wind from you when you walk the length of your room to go take a wiz. So you overcome your stubbornness and go to an Urgent Care.

This new doctor says he doesn't like the sound of your lungs and orders a chest Xray. Your new doctor says you have pneumonia and gives you two more pills to take. Antibiotics. They'll help you start breathing better again.

But you don't start breathing better. And the fevers only go away for a little when you take Tylenol. And you're having to breathe faster now even in bed. You wait three more days, taking the antibiotics which were supposed to fix you, until you're scared enough to head to the Emergency Room. Because you can't breathe.

You're seen by the first new doctor in the afternoon. The nurses put some tubing under your nose and now you don't have to breathe so hard. He's wearing a lot of stuff your other doctors never wore. It's hard to hear him as he speaks through two masks. He probably says something about that virus that’s going around. The COVID virus. And you're shocked because you thought it was the flu, and you haven't been around any sick people. You don't know where you got it from.

Four hours later a different doctor comes by (also wearing a lot of masks and a yellow dress) and says you're heading upstairs. He asks you even more questions. By this time, you had to switch to a face mask to get enough oxygen to breathe ok.

You spend the night in the hospital. You're woken up at 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, and 5AM for a nurse to come take your vitals. If you take your mask off for even a minute, you feel like you've just run up 2 flights of stairs.

Your newest doctors (there's a few of them) wake you up around 8AM. They listen to your lungs, look at the monitor next to your bed that beeps sometimes, and frown. You can tell even under the masks. They say you're going to get different pills. One of them isn't usually used to treat the COVID, but you're desperate to breathe and you agree to it.

Your nurse keeps coming into your room to check your monitor a few times in an hour. You're breathing just as fast as you were at home, even with the mask of oxygen on.

Suddenly there's a lot of talk outside your room. Maybe you can make it out over the sound of the whooshing air into the mask and your own breathing, maybe not. Doesn't matter.

If you were listening, you'd hear an anesthesiologist asking why he was called stat to the room when a decision hasn't been made yet to intubate or not. (Intubate. Do you know what that word means?) You hear a different doctor ask why they weren't called earlier to first evaluate the patient before the anesthesiologist was called. After a minute or two you see a tall doctor enter your room, again with the masks, and the yellow dress.

Things start to move faster now.

He speaks quickly but seemingly without worry in his voice. "How are you feeling?" (Did he even pause to introduce himself? You can't remember.) You answer in clipped words. "It's not hard to breathe," you say, "but I just can't catch my breath."

He explains that your oxygen is too low despite the mask. And he says the only way to help you keep breathing is to stick a plastic tube down your throat and hook you up to a machine. He explains you'll be asleep while it's in. You agree, because why the hell wouldn't you?

He exits just as quickly as he came in. Again, if you're listening closely, outside the door you hear him say to some people you can't see, "We don’t need to intubate in the room, we've got a good five or ten minutes before he goes south. Get him to the sick you."

You probably didn’t hear that last thing right.

You're rolled out of your room in your stretcher to an elevator. You go up and are wheeled into a busy room of other people in beds but with tubes down their throats, with only drapes to separate them, filled with dozens of people in yellow dresses and masks and plastic windshields on their face. There's more of those same dings and bells you heard from your own monitor, but they're all over the room echoing off the floors and walls and ceiling.

Another doctor says you're going to go to sleep. You look scared. You don’t ask any questions, you just keep breathing. The monitor behind you keeps dinging.

You don't even realize they pushed the medicine into your veins in the two seconds it takes for you to stop feeling or hearing anything.

…

Maybe you remember being in a fog as the medicine wore off a little. Maybe. You choke on the thing in your throat. Your eyes well up. Then you go back to sleep less than a minute later when you're given more medicine. You hope you don’t remember that.

Now you're wherever we go when we sleep.

You hope you wake up.

MadJackal posted:

Day 8

“We’re going to need to start making decisions on who gets care, and no one is stepping up. No one wants to cross that line."

“I don’t want to go this way.”


The Story of You

You're a reasonably healthy guy in your mid 50s.

Sure, you had a health scare when you were in your mid 30s, a pretty big scare come to think of it. You had some chest pain whenever you worked too hard and went to a heart doctor and after a bunch of tests wound up getting some kind of mesh tube in your heart. Or something. Doesn't matter. You see your heart doctor every year and he tells you you're fine. Maybe lose a couple pounds. Here's a pill you should take for your blood pressure. Maybe you know the name of it, maybe you don't. But you still see your heart doctor, even two decades later, because you want to be healthy.

Your other doctor worries about your sugars. He tells you to take a different pill. Metformin. You know that one's name. Your other doctor also tells you to lose some weight. And he says he doesn't like how high this blood test number is. But you feel fine. It doesn't hurt like the chest pain you had.

Maybe you work at a gas station. Maybe you're a public notary, doesn't matter. You're definitely blue collar. Hair's thinning and mostly grey, you keep it buzzed pretty close to the scalp. You haven't shaven for the past week or so it seems, because you got sick.

You come down with the flu. Fevers that leave you sweating and chills that put you under the extra blankets you keep on the top shelf of your closet. You don't take a temperature though. You just feel awful. And the cough keeps you up at night. You're not coughing up any goo though, so that's good. Right?

You put up with it for a week. The fevers aren't going away. What's more worrying is that it's getting harder to breathe. Not the kind of hard to breathe when you had your heart issue, no, this is taking the wind from you when you walk the length of your room to go take a wiz. So you overcome your stubbornness and go to an Urgent Care.

This new doctor says he doesn't like the sound of your lungs and orders a chest Xray. Your new doctor says you have pneumonia and gives you two more pills to take. Antibiotics. They'll help you start breathing better again.

But you don't start breathing better. And the fevers only go away for a little when you take Tylenol. And you're having to breathe faster now even in bed. You wait three more days, taking the antibiotics which were supposed to fix you, until you're scared enough to head to the Emergency Room. Because you can't breathe.

You're seen by the first new doctor in the afternoon. The nurses put some tubing under your nose and now you don't have to breathe so hard. He's wearing a lot of stuff your other doctors never wore. It's hard to hear him as he speaks through two masks. He probably says something about that virus that’s going around. The COVID virus. And you're shocked because you thought it was the flu, and you haven't been around any sick people. You don't know where you got it from.

Four hours later a different doctor comes by (also wearing a lot of masks and a yellow dress) and says you're heading upstairs. He asks you even more questions. By this time, you had to switch to a face mask to get enough oxygen to breathe ok.

You spend the night in the hospital. You're woken up at 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, and 5AM for a nurse to come take your vitals. If you take your mask off for even a minute, you feel like you've just run up 2 flights of stairs.

Your newest doctors (there's a few of them) wake you up around 8AM. They listen to your lungs, look at the monitor next to your bed that beeps sometimes, and frown. You can tell even under the masks. They say you're going to get different pills. One of them isn't usually used to treat the COVID, but you're desperate to breathe and you agree to it.

Your nurse keeps coming into your room to check your monitor a few times in an hour. You're breathing just as fast as you were at home, even with the mask of oxygen on.

Suddenly there's a lot of talk outside your room. Maybe you can make it out over the sound of the whooshing air into the mask and your own breathing, maybe not. Doesn't matter.

If you were listening, you'd hear an anesthesiologist asking why he was called stat to the room when a decision hasn't been made yet to intubate or not. (Intubate. Do you know what that word means?) You hear a different doctor ask why they weren't called earlier to first evaluate the patient before the anesthesiologist was called. After a minute or two you see a tall doctor enter your room, again with the masks, and the yellow dress.

Things start to move faster now.

He speaks quickly but seemingly without worry in his voice. "How are you feeling?" (Did he even pause to introduce himself? You can't remember.) You answer in clipped words. "It's not hard to breathe," you say, "but I just can't catch my breath."

He explains that your oxygen is too low despite the mask. And he says the only way to help you keep breathing is to stick a plastic tube down your throat and hook you up to a machine. He explains you'll be asleep while it's in. You agree, because why the hell wouldn't you?

He exits just as quickly as he came in. Again, if you're listening closely, outside the door you hear him say to some people you can't see, "We don’t need to intubate in the room, we've got a good five or ten minutes before he goes south. Get him to the sick you."

You probably didn’t hear that last thing right.

You're rolled out of your room in your stretcher to an elevator. You go up and are wheeled into a busy room of other people in beds but with tubes down their throats, with only drapes to separate them, filled with dozens of people in yellow dresses and masks and plastic windshields on their face. There's more of those same dings and bells you heard from your own monitor, but they're all over the room echoing off the floors and walls and ceiling.

Another doctor says you're going to go to sleep. You look scared. You don’t ask any questions, you just keep breathing. The monitor behind you keeps dinging.

You don't even realize they pushed the medicine into your veins in the two seconds it takes for you to stop feeling or hearing anything.

…

Maybe you remember being in a fog as the medicine wore off a little. Maybe. You choke on the thing in your throat. Your eyes well up. Then you go back to sleep less than a minute later when you're given more medicine. You hope you don’t remember that.

Now you're wherever we go when we sleep.

You hope you wake up.

MadJackal posted:

Day 8

“We’re going to need to start making decisions on who gets care, and no one is stepping up. No one wants to cross that line."

“I don’t want to go this way.”


The Story of You

You're a reasonably healthy guy in your mid 50s.

Sure, you had a health scare when you were in your mid 30s, a pretty big scare come to think of it. You had some chest pain whenever you worked too hard and went to a heart doctor and after a bunch of tests wound up getting some kind of mesh tube in your heart. Or something. Doesn't matter. You see your heart doctor every year and he tells you you're fine. Maybe lose a couple pounds. Here's a pill you should take for your blood pressure. Maybe you know the name of it, maybe you don't. But you still see your heart doctor, even two decades later, because you want to be healthy.

Your other doctor worries about your sugars. He tells you to take a different pill. Metformin. You know that one's name. Your other doctor also tells you to lose some weight. And he says he doesn't like how high this blood test number is. But you feel fine. It doesn't hurt like the chest pain you had.

Maybe you work at a gas station. Maybe you're a public notary, doesn't matter. You're definitely blue collar. Hair's thinning and mostly grey, you keep it buzzed pretty close to the scalp. You haven't shaven for the past week or so it seems, because you got sick.

You come down with the flu. Fevers that leave you sweating and chills that put you under the extra blankets you keep on the top shelf of your closet. You don't take a temperature though. You just feel awful. And the cough keeps you up at night. You're not coughing up any goo though, so that's good. Right?

You put up with it for a week. The fevers aren't going away. What's more worrying is that it's getting harder to breathe. Not the kind of hard to breathe when you had your heart issue, no, this is taking the wind from you when you walk the length of your room to go take a wiz. So you overcome your stubbornness and go to an Urgent Care.

This new doctor says he doesn't like the sound of your lungs and orders a chest Xray. Your new doctor says you have pneumonia and gives you two more pills to take. Antibiotics. They'll help you start breathing better again.

But you don't start breathing better. And the fevers only go away for a little when you take Tylenol. And you're having to breathe faster now even in bed. You wait three more days, taking the antibiotics which were supposed to fix you, until you're scared enough to head to the Emergency Room. Because you can't breathe.

You're seen by the first new doctor in the afternoon. The nurses put some tubing under your nose and now you don't have to breathe so hard. He's wearing a lot of stuff your other doctors never wore. It's hard to hear him as he speaks through two masks. He probably says something about that virus that’s going around. The COVID virus. And you're shocked because you thought it was the flu, and you haven't been around any sick people. You don't know where you got it from.

Four hours later a different doctor comes by (also wearing a lot of masks and a yellow dress) and says you're heading upstairs. He asks you even more questions. By this time, you had to switch to a face mask to get enough oxygen to breathe ok.

You spend the night in the hospital. You're woken up at 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, and 5AM for a nurse to come take your vitals. If you take your mask off for even a minute, you feel like you've just run up 2 flights of stairs.

Your newest doctors (there's a few of them) wake you up around 8AM. They listen to your lungs, look at the monitor next to your bed that beeps sometimes, and frown. You can tell even under the masks. They say you're going to get different pills. One of them isn't usually used to treat the COVID, but you're desperate to breathe and you agree to it.

Your nurse keeps coming into your room to check your monitor a few times in an hour. You're breathing just as fast as you were at home, even with the mask of oxygen on.

Suddenly there's a lot of talk outside your room. Maybe you can make it out over the sound of the whooshing air into the mask and your own breathing, maybe not. Doesn't matter.

If you were listening, you'd hear an anesthesiologist asking why he was called stat to the room when a decision hasn't been made yet to intubate or not. (Intubate. Do you know what that word means?) You hear a different doctor ask why they weren't called earlier to first evaluate the patient before the anesthesiologist was called. After a minute or two you see a tall doctor enter your room, again with the masks, and the yellow dress.

Things start to move faster now.

He speaks quickly but seemingly without worry in his voice. "How are you feeling?" (Did he even pause to introduce himself? You can't remember.) You answer in clipped words. "It's not hard to breathe," you say, "but I just can't catch my breath."

He explains that your oxygen is too low despite the mask. And he says the only way to help you keep breathing is to stick a plastic tube down your throat and hook you up to a machine. He explains you'll be asleep while it's in. You agree, because why the hell wouldn't you?

He exits just as quickly as he came in. Again, if you're listening closely, outside the door you hear him say to some people you can't see, "We don’t need to intubate in the room, we've got a good five or ten minutes before he goes south. Get him to the sick you."

You probably didn’t hear that last thing right.

You're rolled out of your room in your stretcher to an elevator. You go up and are wheeled into a busy room of other people in beds but with tubes down their throats, with only drapes to separate them, filled with dozens of people in yellow dresses and masks and plastic windshields on their face. There's more of those same dings and bells you heard from your own monitor, but they're all over the room echoing off the floors and walls and ceiling.

Another doctor says you're going to go to sleep. You look scared. You don’t ask any questions, you just keep breathing. The monitor behind you keeps dinging.

You don't even realize they pushed the medicine into your veins in the two seconds it takes for you to stop feeling or hearing anything.

…

Maybe you remember being in a fog as the medicine wore off a little. Maybe. You choke on the thing in your throat. Your eyes well up. Then you go back to sleep less than a minute later when you're given more medicine. You hope you don’t remember that.

Now you're wherever we go when we sleep.

You hope you wake up.

Dustcat posted:

this is a thing that could never ever happen in the united states until the second revolution

MadJackal posted:

Writing sort of took a left turn tonight. All based on today's events though.

Honestly, think I'm going to rewrite that one tomorrow to focus on the Code Blue today.

It was relaxing to be more creative than usual.