A Mask or a Respirator?
By Judy Shine Logan
The continuing debate over whether or not to wear a mask for COVID-19 plagues me.
Such a simple act of protection and charity seems so easy, not only in helping to prevent the virus from spreading, but also in reducing one of the worst consequences for those hospitalized with advanced COVID-19 need for a respirator, but I’m not sure people understand or can appreciate that connection.
The word “intubation” means to in(sert) a tube in the esophagus through which a respirator then pumps oxygen into a patient who cannot or is not breathing on her/his own, like those with advanced COVID-19.
I have not (yet) had COVID-19, but in the past 17 years, I have been intubated three times following surgery: 2003 lobectomy for lung cancer; 2011 collapsed lung from food aspiration; 2015 nephrectomy for kidney cancer.
Each time I was intubated, I felt the panic and the pain of having that tube slowly pushed down my throat as I sipped drops of water to help it move on.
I felt the continuing discomfort of a foreign object in my esophagus that prevented me from speaking, or eating, or drinking except through a painful IV needle in my wrist, and a bottle of something swinging on a pole.
I felt the raw, painful extraction of that tube, and saw the bloody flesh ripped from my esophagus on the tube’s way out because it had been in there so long tissue had attached to it.
My goal in writing this piece, and entitling it A Mask or a Respirator? is to help people feel what intubation is like, and hopefully encourage them to choose to wear a mask rather than respirator.
A mask is voluntary, but a respirator is mandatory when trying to stay alive as COVID-19 sucks the air out of you.
A Mask or a Respirator?
by Judy Shine Logan
Nailed to the bed, a tube down my throat
I cannot move a muscle.
My cords don’t work, and I cannot speak,
my legs are numb, and my feet are dead.
The princess and her stupid pea has nothing that compares with me.
My flesh falls heavily on the sheet, its wrinkles gouge my back.
The pain within and the pain without join hands to crush me flat.
I cannot ask to fix these things, or say how much they hurt.
So, tears fall silently down my face, and later fill my ears.
Only my head is moveable, so I whip it left and right,
To dispel the brine and show contempt for my imprisonment.
They think I’m sad, my watchful guards, and fill me full of drugs,
Which makes me sleep and forget about the pain that encircles me.
But when I awake, the pain’s still there, and still, I cannot speak.
Photo/Judy Shine Logan.
Judy Shine Logan is currently Vice President of the Sun City Summerlin Writers Workshop, and she anxiously awaits its reopening following the long COVID-19 closure. A member of the Henderson Writers Group (since 2011), Judy served as its past librarian and historian, as well as a presenter/speaker at the 2014 and 2015 Las Vegas Writers Conferences hosted by the Henderson Writers Group and other organizations. For the past several years, Judy has enjoyed being part of the “CHT” (Coffee House Tours group), originally founded by Vicki Ann Bush, joining other writers in meeting and greeting the public and sharing and signing our books at many locations throughout the valley. Through the efforts of Stephen Murray, Judy has enjoyed speaking at many retirement and assisted living facilities, sharing her book and its story with seniors and with the public at restaurants, bars, bookstores, book signings, etc. Before retiring and moving to Las Vegas, Judy designed and developed training curricula for a major healthcare company for over 20 years, and she created and delivered a Pre-GED Preparation curriculum for a New Hampshire school system for five years. Judy’s novel, Shelter Me: When friendship is all that remains, was published in 2013 by Ink and Quill Publishing of Henderson, Nevada. Other fiction credits include short stories published in Wildflower Magazine, a story chosen for publication in the ChicaPeeps Women’s Anthology, and two stories published in Writers Bloc IV and Writers Bloc V Anthologies by the Henderson Writers Group.
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