I spent much of December 2016 in St. Vincent Hospital with severe respiratory distress that led to the insertion of a trach tube. The biggest problem was the fact that I could not talk until late in the process of recovery. It led me to issue a desperate prayer request “Pray that they listen to the man with no voice”. In this series of more than a dozen blog posts I recount that story in detail. What led me to make such a desperate prayer request? What sequence of events turned this normally upbeat person into one filled with angst and despair? What does this experience tell us about the way patients are treated differently when they are unable to speak their mind and participate in their own health care decisions? These are the issues discussed in the blog posts below. I hope you enjoy them.

A follow-up series about the two weeks I spent in Seton Specialty Hospital after leaving the St. Vincent ICU is chronicled in my series titled “Holiday Hospital“.