I anticipated that I was settled in for the night. They seem to have finished poking and prodding at me and I’ve answered all the questions. The BiPAP was continuing to be a little bit out of phase but I was compensating best I could. However somewhere around 2 AM the “come-and-go” congestion got really worse. I told the nurse I wasn’t doing very well and she could see that for herself. It wasn’t long before I was in yet another of these very serious spells of respiratory distress. We made the decision that I needed to be intubated.

They called for the pulmonary doctor who happened to be one that was familiar to me I guy named Dr. Pfeiffer. He was a partner to my regular pulmonary doctor whose name is Dr. Vohra. Pfeiffer does all of the in-hospital work for that particular partnership. I had had him before as had my mother on many occasions years ago when she was battling lung cancer. He would not remember me or her given the number of patients he sees on a regular basis but I remember him and knew I was in good hands.

It took a while to get everything organized. Residents and interns started showing up. The nurse said to me “You are drawing a crowd”. It reminded me of a running joke I have with my friend Anne Chapman about all of the artistic skills we have based on things we can “draw” such as: I can draw a bath. I can draw a glass of water. I can draw the wrong conclusion. At the time it seemed to me the phrase “I can draw a crowd” might not ever have been on the list that Anne and I had compiled. However prior to writing this blog I dug out the old list and “draw a crowd” was indeed already on it.

Because my mouth doesn’t open very far there’s no way to intubate me using the normal method down throat. I always have to be intubated in my nose. I explained to them that the left nostril was the best one. I told them that occasionally they have used pediatric size tubing. They go in with a scope so that they can see what they’re doing. One of the first times I had to be nasally intubated they just jammed into me blindly and it went really badly. Fortunately the scope method is much smoother. They spray a bunch of medicine in your nose to attempt to numb it. It never does seem to completely numb the pain for example in the way that a shot of Novocain deadens your mouth for dental procedures. Some of it they squirt in and some of it they dab in on the end of a Q-tip. I say it doesn’t work very well but who knows… Maybe it would be much worse if they didn’t do it.

They had some Versed anesthetic available that makes you forget procedures such as this and some other kind of mild anesthetic ready to inject into the IV that have been placed in the back of my right hand. But they didn’t want to give me any of that until they actually had the tube inserted.

While we were waiting for Dr. Pfeiffer to arrive I had a conversation with the nurse and told her that I would raise my eyebrows up and down for yes and wiggle my mouth left to right to indicate no. I can’t really move my head up and down or side to side so that was the best I can do. I asked if they had some sort of chart or paper with the alphabet on it so that we can spell out words. She said that she believed they did have something like that available. Because I can’t point to such a chart with my hand, I suggested that they put a straw in my mouth, hold the chart up in front of me, and I would try to point to it with the straw. I had never actually attempted this but I had been thinking about it many times since the last time I had to be intubated. She said we would try it.

Dr. Pfeiffer finally arrived and began the procedure. He would get the tube just to the point where it felt like it was about to enter my windpipe but he would not put it all away in. I couldn’t figure out what was holding him up. Of course your gag reflex kicks in and the entire process is quite unpleasant. I knew I shouldn’t be talking but at times I tried to ask why isn’t it working? Sometimes I would get really distressed and couldn’t breathe I would try to mouth words like “I can’t breathe”.

I had an amazing sense of déjà vu because there were probably eight people standing around me working on me and some of them were trying to understand what I was saying to them but there it was one young guy standing in the back who was the only one out of the group that can either read my lips on makes sense of what I was trying to mumble at various times. I recall the first time I ever came out of anesthetic from my intestinal surgery and I was on the ventilator I tried to mouth the words “I can’t breathe”. A young male respiratory therapist on that particular day was the only one who understood me. I wonder is this young man was also a respiratory therapist.

In that previous incident years ago, I had the pleasure to talk to that guy later after I had the intubation tube out. I thanked him for being the only one in a group of supposedly more educated people who were standing around me clueless as to what was going on and that he was the one who understood me. Whoever this new young man was I hope to be able to later have a conversation with him and congratulate him for being the only one in the room who was aware of my needs. Spoiler alert… He was a medical student and I did have an opportunity to talk to him a few days later. We developed a great report and friendship throughout my stay in the ICU. We will have more about him later.

Somehow I became aware that the reason they were having such difficulty is that there was a huge mucous plug that he was having to suction out of the way before he could get the intubation tube into my lungs. The combination of that and my somewhat strange anatomy had made the whole process very difficult. Eventually the tube went in and the anesthetic followed and I was out for the night.