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Are patients sleeping during medically-induced comas? Are they more comfortable and free of trauma while sedated? Can patients hear, feel, and understand their surroundings while in a medically-induced coma? Do patients know when sedation is turn up higher? Do they know which providers will let them wake up and which ones will try to “turn you off”? Drew Brophy is a world-renown artist that found himself intubated with COVID19. Drew and Maria Brophy share their astounding journey through critical illness and post-ICU syndrome.

Episode Transcription

Kali Dayton 0:04
Can you introduce yourselves?

Drew Brophy 0:19
I’m Drew Brophy. And I was intubated for COVID.

Maria Brophy 0:31
Hi, I’m Maria Brophy, I’m Drew’s wife. And so back in November 2021, we both got COVID. Pretty good. Drew got extremely ill. I took him to the emergency room. And he was whisked away. And I didn’t get to see him again for a couple of weeks. When he was in the when he was admitted, they, you know, his lungs were a mess. And I think he was in the hospital for about, I want to say, and days, maybe 12 days. Before it was, he was very, it was encouraged to put him on a ventilator. And he had popped the holders lung. We will I’ll just get the I’ll just give the Cliff Notes. And then we can go into the details. But it was Thanksgiving Day, he was put on a ventilator induced coma. And it went on for four weeks, they induced coma the whole time they expected him to die.

Drew Brophy 1:45
Two days in they wanted to unplug me.

Maria Brophy 1:50
Yes, two days after being put on the ventilator. The doctor told me that he was suffering and it was a horrible way to die. And that he wanted. He was asking permission to turn off life support. And I said no. I even though I knew that it looked really bad. I basically had made a decision not to give up hope. Until after he took his last breath. That was a decision I made.

Kali Dayton 2:32
And how a difficult mean for it. You’re still trying to wrap your brain around. He’s in ICU, He’s intubated, And now they’re wanted to shift gears again. I’m so glad I’m interviewing both of you. Because Maria, your trauma is is very real, and the stress and the difficulties of that situation and then not to be able to communicate with her and make those decisions together. And then to be not even physically by him had to have been horrific.

Maria Brophy 3:03
It was really hard. One thing that I started doing was, well, immediately. Once he was put on the ventilator, and induced in coma, I had the nurses for six plus two hours a day, put an iPad next to his head, and I would talk to him and I would play music for him. And I did that every single day. And I also keep it in a room with a big window. I was also I was the crazy lady staring in the window every day I would drive to the hospital every day, my sister in law would go with me.

And the nurses started leaving notes in the window. Just like friendly notes saying hello. They they knew I was going to be there every day and I would stand outside that window because I just couldn’t stand to be away from him. I couldn’t stand for him to be alone in there. Finally, you know I want to say it was about four days after he was put in a coma and on the ventilator. The doctor I think they thought he was gonna die any minute. And the doctor actually let me and my sister in law end to see him. And so we we got to go into the COVID unit and it was like walking into a creepy dungeon.

It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It felt like death in there. There was plastic everywhere. Oh my gosh, it’s terrible. But I was so grateful to even go in his room because it was the first time I was able to touch him. In a couple of weeks, even though he was in a coma, and the doctor let us in for about three days in a row, but then when the doctor realized through wasn’t going to die, he stopped letting us. And then it wasn’t too long after that they moved him out of COVID unit because he was testing negative now. So they moved him up to the CICU. And then I was able to come in and be in there every single day.

Drew Brophy 5:33
I would like to back up a little bit. And from the moment we arrived at the hospital, I didn’t even know if I had COVID. Prior to that, we went to an urgent care. And they tested me for COVID. And I, they tested my oxygen while they waited for the test to come back positive or negative. And my oxygen level was super low. It’s like 70 something. And they freaked out. They thought the machine was messed up.

And they said, “You need to go to the hospital right now.” So we went to the emergency room. And at this point, I still was not afraid I was not worried. I was like, “Okay, well, I’m going to be treated here at the hospital.” My mindset was that, you know, they were going to have some type of something for me that would help me get better. But they were waiting for us, they the urgent care, they called ahead. And like Maria said, when she pulled up, she was still having to park the car and stuff, they opened the door and pulled me out. I didn’t realize that they were going to take me away. So I didn’t get the hover, goodbye, anything. I was pulled out and I was gone. And from that moment, I felt like a prisoner.

Maria Brophy 6:57
It’s pretty terrifying because I tried to go in. And you know, I’ve taken him to the hospital before- he’s an athlete. So we’ve been there are many stitches over the years and all kinds of things. And never have I’ve been locked out. And I’ve never seen security guards at a hospital before it it was really terrifying.

Drew Brophy 7:19
Yeah. And so the next thing that I would like to say is that, you know, I have all the utmost respect for all the doctors and nurses. They are great people. The things that we’re about to talk about, are really about the system and how everybody was caught in their system. And including me, including them. And so this is not a dig on people per se, but the situation we all found ourselves in.

Kali Dayton 7:52
Absolutely, I think COVID Was this totally foreign and terrifying, overwhelming world that led to desperate decisions. And some of them were essential. Some of them were unfounded. But but no one was trying to harm anyone. Everyone was trying so desperately to save as many lives as possible. It’s, it’s hard, because a lot of things that happened during COVID are still happening. Because we have misunderstood the real repercussions of those decisions.

And you were separated from your wife, which is now hopefully changing. Hopefully, we’re letting families in more often and I’m advocating always for liberal visitation. Maria should have been an essential part of the ICU team the entire time and in normal circumstances she would have been. But what was what was it like to be in the ICU and to be facing a ventilator? What were those discussions? Like what kind of preparation did you have before being put into the coma?

Drew Brophy 9:01
Well, I can just say from the moment I was in there, I was sent for a CT scan. And I was totally aware. And I overheard the tech talking to the nurse. Not the dark, but I guess it was the doctor and the nurse, but they were talking about how bad my scans were. And this doesn’t look good. These are this looks really bad. And then it occurred to me I was like, Oh, they’re talking about me as I’m being wheeled into the COVID unit. And the whole COVID unit was like I can just remember there being plastic everywhere on the walls like duct tape and like really crazy.

And once I entered that space, everybody was you know of course in like masks. Face masks gloves, or they’re totally covered. So it was scary from the get go, I was like, Oh, wow, this, this deteriorated quick, you know, one minute walking in to, like here and basically, this doesn’t look good, I don’t think he’s gonna make it type of thing from the moment I got in there. I didn’t understand that my wife was not going to be allowed in. I was immediately put on oxygen.

And I was in a dark room, a small room by myself, I was told to lay on my stomach. Nobody moved me the whole time. Nobody told me to shut up. Nobody told me this. So my side or my back to move. I remember one nurse coming in. He was a man and said, “Well, why are you still laying down, you should be being moved?” I remember him yelling or not yelling, but having a stern conversation with somebody. Like, you know, “He needs to be you know, sit up and he needs to get up.” And it sounded like everybody was frantic.

They didn’t have enough people. They’re short staffed. Not much communication with me. The doctor seemed to come in every once a while super early in the morning when I was foggy. My mind was still clear at this point. I was listening to books, I was using my phone. And at some point as I started feeling better. And I can remember sitting up in my room, and there was a window where they could see in and I thought it was over. And so I was keen on sitting up, it felt good to sit up. It was the first time that I you know, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and things like that. But you know, just to sit up and like I was like, “Oh, wow, I feel much better.”

And I started breathing. I was taking big deep breaths. I thought it just felt so good to breathe. I still had oxygen on but I don’t think it was a whole lot at that point. And it just felt good to breathe. So a significant deep breaths. And I thought I was expediting my healing like I was taking charge. I can remember nurses looking at me through the window but not coming in. And I don’t know how long it passed maybe an hour or something. And then all of a sudden a nurse came in and started poking my shoulders like this.

And she ran out and then got some other people and they’re all looking at me and then they all started freaking out. And evidently my looked like I had shoulder pads on. And so at that time prior to that I’ve been I was texting people because I had all these texts that I was like, they’re worried about me. I’m like, No, I’m good. I should be coming home soon. I’m feeling much better. I’m by basically telling people I’m gonna come home. And then I get whisked out for another cat scan.

And that’s when they found out at a pump some holes in my lungs. And guess that was the gas coming out in my shoulders. I called popcorn. Uh huh. I’d still not see my wife other than through the phone, FaceTime. They immediately put me on 100% oxygen through the cannula. And then they put a big blower thing on me. That was really loud. And that thing was running full blast. Shortly thereafter, the doctor was it was evening came in and said we need to put you in a coma.

And I had a discussion with him. It was hard to hear him through the blower. And he said that potholes, my lungs and they couldn’t get enough oxygen in me that I had to go into a coma on a ventilator intubated. And I argued with them that everybody that goes on a ventilator usually doesn’t make it. I understood I’d read up enough that this was not a positive thing. And he said well, if you don’t, if you don’t do this, you will die. He said you might last till tomorrow, but you’ll you’re gonna die if we don’t do this.

And he said or you might have a heart attack or stroke before that He said, there’ll be awful you, my team will have to try to revive you and he goes, you’ll probably die anyway. And it’s, you don’t want to die like that. It’s better if we just put you in a coma. And I said, No, I said, I’m gonna fight. And he was visibly sad about this, he, he said, Okay, I’ll you know, grant your wishes and but I’m moving you to a room with a window. So you can say goodbye to your family. And they moved me shortly thereafter, to the only room with the window.

And they love my wife and my sister to come see me through the window. I still wasn’t scared. I thought I had it. But I stayed up all night, making sure I didn’t fade out, trying to breathe. And I realized that I’m gonna have to go into the coma. wasn’t an easy decision. But I mean, I couldn’t stay awake forever. I felt like I was drowning. I understand why people give up. It is very hard to maintain this lack of oxygen. And so that morning, I agreed. I talked to my wife and sister. I was able to make two phone calls one to my son, and one to my mother. And I told my wife that I wasn’t afraid I got this. Don’t let him turn the machines off. And I watched them fade away and they gassed me. I guess it was nitrous oxide or something. I don’t know. I put a thing over my face. And they blurred out. But, yeah, that was what it was like.

Kali Dayton 17:04
And did you have experiences while you were sedated? I mean, you were four weeks you were sedated. What was that like?

Drew Brophy 17:16
Might be a topic for another conversation. It was it was amazing.

Maria Brophy 17:26
Well there’s two things right. So one Drew had a, a near death experience. And that’s the amazing thing he’s talking about. But then the the other the other part of it is when you were coming in and out of the sedation.

Drew Brophy 17:43
Yeah. So coming back, not so easy. They do not tell you, you know that you’re only supposed to be in a coma for a few days, maybe a week tops, that the drugs are killing you. They don’t tell you about the atrophy. They don’t tell you about the psychosis, they don’t tell you that you’re going to be trapped in your body. They don’t tell you that. Your ability to recover from this is not very good. You know, it’s just like, “You need to do this. Because this is going to save your life or this is a better way to die than the alternative.”

So all that happened in a split second, you know, trying to make these decisions. And basically you do the best you can with the information you have. Like I said it was a dire situation for everybody. I had deep compassion for my doctor, when he had that discussion with me wondered how many people you had to tell that to? And how many people never woke up. But I did you know witness for all those families who loved ones had to face this. Waking up was was awful. It was you’re totally paralyzed.

You’re locked in your body. My mind was perfect. And I didn’t understand that I was paralyzed and I thought I was being restrained. I thought it due to the time loss in the experience. I hadn’t come I felt like I’d been gone for a very very long time. Like lifetimes. I thought I came back to somewhere else. I thought I was in some type of lab that was doing experiments on me. Like I said everybody was in hazmat suits with facemasks, you can’t understand anything anybody’s saying, “I can’t move.”

They’re poking you and prodding, you slap me around like a dead fish. They’re talking, I can hear them, I can understand what they’re saying. I heard awful things about me. You know that they can’t believe that I was alive. And I probably won’t last much longer. Or, you know, this poor guy. And you’re just sitting there like, Man, how to undo here. I can remember when I saw my wife, I realized I was in the right place.

But I couldn’t talk to her. They, I can remember, nurse who came in a male nurse. And he was mad that I wasn’t sitting up when he was we got to move this guy, we’ve got to get him up. We got to you know.

And they had me in a room with a lift. But it took a lot of people to do this. I can remember him putting me in that lift. As soon as I sat up, they don’t tell you that you get sick because you get the spin. So as soon as they would sit me up, I couldn’t control this, but they’d sit me up the room would spin.

Kali Dayton 21:39
You’re having a vestibular response or vestibular dysfunction.

Drew Brophy 21:44
And so it was, I couldn’t fight back. But you mean, I would get so sick, all I wanted to do was be still. And they would put me in this lift is trying to sit me in a chair. And since I was, you know, at the risk of having it go in my lungs, it didn’t want that. But I can remember throwing up a lot during one of these times. And then you’re choking to death. And like I said, you can control it. If you you know what people don’t realize is on a ventilator. You’ve there’s no up and down. It’s just blows up. You feel like you’re dead. is there’s no rhythm. Your heart annex, it thinks you’re suffocating. So it’s racing is like the whole time I was like running a marathon.

Kali Dayton 22:51
Your heart racing.

Drew Brophy 22:53
You couldn’t stop it.

Maria Brophy 22:55
There was a period of days where his heart rate was 160 Day after day and…

Drew Brophy 23:03
solid.

Maria Brophy 23:04
I was doing everything I could to get that heartrate down by playing soft music…

Kali Dayton 23:12
There’s a lot that happens to the heart when you are supine and immobile. I mean, even without COVID If I were to go in and be sedated for four weeks, my heart rate would be significantly significantly higher than my baseline. I’d have consistent tachycardia. Now you had COVID on top of that, you had a lot of things going on. So your heart deconditions so quickly, while you’re not being challenged or not, not really having a difference in fluid shifts and things like that while you’re just laying there. So that makes sense. But it’s interesting to hear that you could feel it. Yes. While you were sedated you could feel it.

Drew Brophy 23:53
Yeah. And they they would be talking like we got to get his heart rate down and so you knew the drugs were coming. They weren’t trying to wean me off the all the drugs the phenobarbital,

Maria Brophy 24:12
versed…

Drew Brophy 24:16
propofol… and all the stuff. Of course, I see them putting it into my IV. And every time they did that, I was like, “Oh man they’re turning me off. And I didn’t want to be turned off.” And I guess they were doing that to calm the heart rate. They didn’t want me to have anxiety. I can always remember nurses coming into being like, you gotta calm down. And I’m like, It’s not me. It’s not unrefined in here. That’s, you know.

Kali Dayton 24:57
We are taught to believe like we are taught to believe that The more you give those medications, the more you are treating anxiety. But you’re saying that you didn’t necessarily feel anxiety? Your body was just presenting with vital signs that are that are like, when patients are having anxiety.

Drew Brophy 25:15
Yeah,

Kali Dayton 25:15
but when they gave you more of those meds, did you feel a sense of calm and peace that we assume or hope patients feel?

Drew Brophy 25:23
No, it was a panic. It was that, “Oh, no, they’re turning me off!” Every time they did it, I thought that I was gonna die again. And when I would come out of it, every time I’d be like, a game alive. And I didn’t want to be turned off. I, every time they turned me off, I thought, you know, I was gonna, I was gonna die.

I know that just by whoever entered the room, whether it was gonna be a good day or a bad day just by which nurse was at my side. Whether they were going to take care of things or how the day was gonna go. And I was terrified a certain nurses, I knew that was going to be neglected, or that they were just going to turn me off for the day. So they had to think about me. Other nurses were fantastic. You know, they told me I was going to be okay. And we’re like, you know, “I’m here.”

Maria Brophy 26:38
We had some angels.

Drew Brophy 26:39
“I’ll be right back.” You feel very alone, especially at night. At night is the worst. The other thing they don’t tell you God is the suction that they have to do to you on a ventilator. Um, it’s, it’s not a pleasant thing to talk about. And they put the wire down the tube and you can feel it in your lungs. The wire was super long. They probably had to suction me about every 15 to 20 minutes.

Kali Dayton 27:12
And even when you were sedated, you could feel it.

Drew Brophy 27:17
Oh, yeah, you can you can feel it. You know, when you’re sedated. When you’re sedated. You’re in this limbo land. I’m wearing nothing makes sense. I was always prepared of what was happening. But, you know, at one point, I thought I was melting into the melting into the floor.

I would think that they they had moved me and they put me behind a stairwell. At one point, I thought I was on fire. And what they had done is put these things on my legs and stimulate your legs. And but it was triggering something. I thought I was on fire. I thought it was burning.

Kali Dayton 28:07
Oh, they weren’t doing electrical stimulation to your muscles. Like EMG?

Drew Brophy 28:14
Yeah, And, um, but in my psychosis, I thought I was on fire.

Maria Brophy 28:20
And that was when you weren’t communicating yet, Right?

Drew Brophy 28:24
Yeah, I couldn’t tell anybody. Um, yeah, I mean, just surviving all that was just the, you know, I really haven’t talked about this part of it much. Just the brutality of what you have to endure. And like I said, I’m super grateful to the doctors, the nurses who saved me. But at the same time, it’s lucky they didn’t kill me. Many things could have gone wrong, and did go the wrong. Things that maybe could have been different.

Just the sheer fact that they were so understaffed. And, you know, maybe maybe not that I never needed to be in a coma. If I would have been, you know, standing and moving more. It’s almost like I was looked at, like, triage, like, Oh, this guy is too far gone. We’re not going to worry about him. That’s the way it felt to me. And it just got worse.

And then they were like, “Okay, it’s time to put him in a coma. And, you know, that’s the best way for him to die.” I think they were surprised when I woke up, I thought, I think that they knew that my body had been destroyed. And they didn’t expect me to recover from that either.

Maria Brophy 30:01
He lost 100 pounds.

Drew Brophy 30:04
In 28 days.

Maria Brophy 30:06
So he was put on a ventilator on Thanksgiving Day. And it was a couple of days before Christmas, that he started to turn around a little bit to….

Drew Brophy 30:14
Two years today. December 21.

Maria Brophy 30:19
Yeah, two years today. Wow. His doctor, and I remember, it was like, the day before Christmas Eve, his doctor said to me, “It’s a Christmas miracle.” And it really was.

Since Drew’s, come home, we’ve had a couple of the doctors visit us, believe it or not. You are the nurses, there’s always tears in the eyes. And they, every single one of them has told us I knew you were gonna die like your because every patient we had that had that severity. didn’t make it. But you know, and they’re so happy.

Kali Dayton 31:12
Oh, the trauma from COVID Is that you lost so many patients, and they were working so hard to keep you alive. And it’s really hard to work that rigorously, expecting intense pain, poor outcomes, and knowing that patients are languishing. I think that’s one of the main causes of burnout and moral injury and the loss of some of the clinicians.

I mean, if you look statistically COVID obviously has higher rates of mortality, especially with the severity that you had, but then to have delirium on top of it, doubled your risk of dying in the hospital, and then to have ice acquired weakness, at least increased your risks by 30% of dying. And those risks still carry out one year plus after discharge.

So the fact that you’ve survived COVID, delirium is acquired a weakness. Two years post discharge, especially with the severity that you had, is astounding, and then to see you now. So how much do you weigh going into the hospital? How much did you weigh at your lowest leaving the hospital? And how much do you weigh now?

Drew Brophy 32:21
So we’re probably to have five to 10. Going into the hospital, what was the lowest- 105.

Maria Brophy 32:31
You got down to 105 after six weeks…

Kali Dayton 32:34
How tall are you?

Drew Brophy 32:37
5 ft 11″.

Maria Brophy 32:38
So he looked like I remember one day I looked at him. I was in the hospital all day, every day I stopped going to work. And that was my lives. And he just kept losing weight. But you know, how you, you know, it was focusing on all these other things like getting him alternative treatment, high dose vitamin C, other things that I was doing, trying to do different than what they do with other COVID patients so that he would make it that I missed, how much weight he was losing. And then one day I looked at him and I said, “Oh my God!”

His cheekbones were… he had no skin on his face. And I had been to a concentration camp in Germany, Dachau many years ago, and there were photos there, of survivors. And he looked like one of those men that had lost all their weight. And that’s what he looked like to me. And I was bones. He was bones and his hair was falling out. And I realized, why are they feeding him and it was just, you know, something I hadn’t thought of. And so I looked at the bag of food that was being fed. And I read the ingredients and I gotta tell you, I was horrified. It wasn’t even food. It was chemicals. And and he was having a problem with throwing up. So that some point they had taken him down to like 600 calories a day because he his stomach couldn’t handle it.

Kali Dayton 34:21
Well, what happens is when you’re on fentanyl, and you’re not moving, your bowels can stop. So you can get obstructions or especially ileus that make it so that you’re not in tall, you’re not able to pass those volumes. And so that makes sense why he lost so much. Also COVID makes people hypermetabolic especially obese patients, but I’m sure in general too, that they metabolize things faster because probably because their immune systems working so hard.

So I think we understood a lot of COVID patients because we may have waited too late to start feeds. And even we didn’t understand how much they actually needed. We kind of calculated these things for their normal resting metabolic rate, not their COVID rate, which was oftentimes much quicker. And then when you’re not utilizing your muscles, you don’t get you can’t rebuild and just even just being bedridden, you don’t rebuild and maintain the muscle mass that you have. So all those factors combined, set at this terrible storm, I’m trying to imagine you at 511 went 105 pounds.

Drew Brophy 35:27
Yeah, it was, I didn’t understand why I was paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my body. Um, I can remember the first time I did, I was able to move my hand first. And I can remember reaching down to grab my femur. And I can put my fingers around it. And I just was like, Oh, my God, what did they do to me? And I remember being able to feel the skin underneath it all the skin was just hanging off of it like a dream.

And there was no muscle. It was just skin. And it just did not compute to me what had happened. Like, I didn’t understand how long I’d been in that coma. Like I said, it felt like it was forever. And then when I came back, I thought, well, maybe it wasn’t that long. But then once I was able to feel my bone in my skin, I was just like, oh my gosh, I’ve been in a coma for years. Like I just it just nothing made sense. And nobody had thought to tell me.

Maria Brophy 36:41
I didn’t think like, I was so busy solving all the I felt like I was putting together a Rubik’s Cube. Every day. I was doing so much research, I had hired doctors outside of the hospital to guide me. And actually nobody would take my money, but I had doctors advising me. I mean, I was doing everything I could to keep keep him to find solutions, that I didn’t think that he didn’t really know what was going on until he could finally right you hit that one hand that could move.

And it was about a week after he came out of the heavy sedation where he finally could write words. And one of the first things he wrote was, “Why Am I paralyzed?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even think to explain to him what had happened.” So then I realized, you know, I had to explain to him that he would learn how to move his body again that he was going to recover that he was not paralyzed that it was temporary.

And then he wrote “What day is it?” And I was afraid to answer the question because I had heard about a guy who had been on a ventilator from COVID. He was a friend of a friend. And what his brother told him he had been out for four weeks or something like that. It scared him so bad. He had like almost had a heart attack, and they had to put him back on the ventilator. So I remember that and I very gently told him, Okay, I’m going to tell you, but I don’t want you to freak out.

Drew Brophy 38:39
But at one point, I was convinced that they were trying to kill me. And that was the delirium. Like I said, like I understood when they were turning me off. And to me that was like, “okay, they’re trying to kill me. They’re trying to put me out.” and even one of my friends who was respiratory therapists was there. I thought he I thought they were all in on it.

Maria Brophy 39:08
You accused him on paper. “You’re using me as a test dummy.” It was it was the worst day of ICU psychosis. Because after he wrote that to Paul, and Paul had seen it all before, so it didn’t bother him. But I was pretty upset that you were accusing everybody. You know, you were out of your mind.

Drew Brophy 39:30
I can remember writing to the nurse, “Why are you trying to murder me?”

Maria Brophy 39:35
Do you remember what you did next? He reached with his one hand that could move any rip the tube this was when he was trying to rip the tube out of his trach. And thank God Paul, the respiratory therapist was right that it happened and Paul was very calm, very calmly put it back in.

Drew Brophy 39:54
I was very frustrated that I literally thought there that They’re trying to kill me. And nobody was taking me seriously. But you know, I was like, “You gotta get me out of here.”

Kali Dayton 40:11
Drew, how has? How have those memories, those beliefs, the stress when you sincerely believed that? How has that impacted you the last two years?

Drew Brophy 40:24
Makes me never want to go to a hospital again.

Maria Brophy 40:26
Pretty terrifying.

Drew Brophy 40:29
I do everything I can not to go ever go to the hospital again. I’m, like I said, there’s good people. But the system is broken. It’s absolutely broken. This is just the the tip of the spear. I spent four and a half months not hospital. And it only got worse. I spent 70 days on that ventilator after being intubated.

Kali Dayton 40:55
So 70 days after getting your trach?

Maria Brophy 40:58
In total. That’s no, you spent you were on the

Drew Brophy 41:03
I didn’t get off the ventilator till February or something.

Maria Brophy 41:07
Yeah, it was a it was a total of 70 days that you were on the ventilator.

Kali Dayton 41:13
I want to invite the listeners to imagine you described your femur as being just a bone, right your leg, you could you could feel your femur, that muscle is gone. That also happened to your diaphragm, and to your respiratory muscles, your core everything that you needed to be able to independently breathe and do the work of breathing.

I think it’s easy to see that and be like, “Well, his lungs were sick, he had COVID.” But at that point, you probably had pretty minimal ventilator settings. It was the loss of muscle mass and function that led you to have the extra 50 days 40 days 60 I mean, however many days on a ventilator as you had to rebuild those muscles required for breathing.

Drew Brophy 41:56
Yeah, they told me I would never get off the ventilator that I was gonna live in a nursing home.

Maria Brophy 42:00
They they told me to, “He’ll be okay. He will live a good life in a nursing home.” And I said “no, no he won’t!” But it was a very scary thought. We actually had a healer go in a woman who is a good friend of ours because that’s what she does for a living. She she works with people with their muscles and their ligaments. And she she works with athletes mostly.

And she’s always helped Drew with all his athletic injuries. So she was going in the hospital regularly. And her main thing was she was helping with his muscles. But the main thing she was trying to wake up his diaphragm. And so she did a lot of work on his diaphragm. Because it was paralyzed.

Drew Brophy 42:53
You know, people don’t understand that. Like I said, there’s no up and down, it’s just up it just blows air and blows you up. And so it doesn’t feel like you’re breathing it doesn’t feel like you’re alive.

And you know being in trach’d it feels like there’s a dog collar around you like you’re choking to death because it’s on there. It you’re not given any water. I didn’t have water for I don’t even know how long through my mouth or mouth feels like a dried, weird thing.

Kali Dayton 43:40
All those muscles required for swallowing safely, have also atrophied. Your body has catabolized those muscles.

Drew Brophy 43:48
It’s your mouth is so dry. And then your nose is cut off. You know and so you’re not breathing through your nose at all is going through your throat. It’s very obvious that there’s something wrong and my nose filled up with blood and stuff. And when it came time to try to beat the ventilator I had a few Angel nurses that convinced the doctor to try to wean me off the ventilator, the respiratory therapist, and I heard them discussing it.

The doctor believed I would never come off the ventilator. It’s been too long. I heard them having discussions are heard many times I heard awful things. And even just you know, nurses being off and arriving back, you know, at work and saying, Oh wow, this guy’s still here. Like they were surprised. That seemed pretty consistent. I did have doctor or not doctors nurses that were fighting over having me for the day. They really wanted me.

Maria Brophy 45:03
Yeah, at the first hospital, the nurses would fight over who got his room like in the last couple of weeks that he was there. Because they saw that he was this miracle man that was possibly going to survive this. And they wanted to be a part of it. And one of them was that nurse Frank who got him out of bed that day. And I’ll tell you, that was the day that the the day Frank got drew out of bed and Drew was still intubated. That way, it was a very tricky maneuver.

Drew Brophy 45:36
I thought I was flying.

Maria Brophy 45:39
It took like five people to do it safely. I was terrified. But they talked me into it first. I said no. And Frank said, “If you don’t get this man out of this bed. He’s never gonna walk again.” I was like, “shit, But you guys might kill him.” I was so scared. But it did it. I yeah, I reluctantly agreed. And that was the day I saw something shift in his mind, where he went from dying to live in. And it was like, a couple days later, when the doctor said, It’s a Christmas miracle.

Drew Brophy 46:19
Yeah,

Maria Brophy 46:20
It was great getting you out of that bed.

Drew Brophy 46:22
And to note on that, you know, the difference between the nurses. It was very clear that, you know, some people were just at work going through the motions, and they didn’t want to look at you. It’s almost like you were, you know, in a dog kennel or something. They were throwing your food at you or something.

And then there was other nurses that were engaged completely. During this whole thing, I had nurses crying on the side of my bed, overwhelmed by all the patients they had. I once had a nurse forget about me for a while and she came back and she was crying on my bed. “I’m so sorry.” And I had my ventilator thing come off a few times. And I just sat there and thought like, “Wow, a beat all this stuff. And now this malfunction is going to kill me, and nobody’s going to come in time.”

And then somebody finally can run it in and put the thing together. That’d be okay. And the worst thing was, I saw a lot of people die, or I heard a lot of people dying. It’s another thing they don’t tell you about. Especially at night, I think I only saw two people died during the day, the rest all happened at night. Maybe a dozen or more. They don’t tell you that you can hear people calling out people crying.

You hear their machines go off. You hear the Code Blue then you feel so bad for him. You’re praying for him even when you’re in your own problem. And then you hear it all stop and you know they died. Saw them we’ll people out. You know I would sit there and wonder I’m like how many people have died in this room. How many people have died in this bed. You know you put all this stuff together.

And the brutality of of it all. It’s amazing. Then you come out of it saying I could feel everything my non my toes and my fingers were numb and my tongue was numb. But everything else I could feel I could feel it every time they put a PICC line in me. I could feel it every time they adjusted the trade in that big open wound in your throat.

The thing around my neck was always too tight. In fact, it felt like I was being strangled to death. I could feel every time they did arterial blood draw, which were done daily, if not more than once a day. They don’t tell you that that needle goes in sideways and they go to try to find that artery, it hits nerves, and it’s like being electrocuted. And then you can’t do anything about it. You can’t even tell them to stop.

They don’t tell you that you don’t get any sleep because they’re doing stuff to you all night long. I don’t know why they do this, but that’s what they do. And then everything happens in the morning. Right after shift change. It’s like all of a sudden a zillion things happen. And the doctor comes in and he can’t understand what he’s saying. And there’s people all around you, and then they everybody disappears. shift change was awful, because you were new for that hour rounds, just shift changed, nothing was going to happen.

And if you had a problem, it was going to be a bigger problem, then you probably needed to be everybody was hurrying to get out and do their report and the new nurse was not in a hurry to come see it and and depending on who I saw, as the new nurse, like I said, I knew what it was gonna be a good day or a bad day. And very often, I would see people that I was terrified, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, and last time I had this nurse, I thought I was going to die.

Maria Brophy 50:50
I remember once when you couldn’t write who told me about a nurse that was really rough with you. And it was a night nurse. And I was I felt like I was truth protector. And I made sure that he never got that nurse again. Yeah.

Drew Brophy 51:08
I remember their faces. I remember their names. I remember all of them.

Maria Brophy 51:13
There were so many good ones, though. So many angels. I just call them angels.

Drew Brophy 51:19
Yeah.

Kali Dayton 51:20
What was it that made you feel so safe with them?

Drew Brophy 51:24
They looked at you. They talk to you. Other ones do. They just come in, put something in your IV and you fade away.

They’re always too busy. Or they’d be panicked about something. You know, I’m usually usually panicked about the heart rate. I can remember one nurse, basically mad at me, because my heart rate was going through the roof. And she was saying to me, like you “gotta calm down.”.

Or, you know, “We’re gonna have to do CPR on you, if you you know, your heart rate, you have a heart attack.” And I’m sitting there in my mind, I’m like, “I’m fine. This is this. You know, it’s not my fault.”

Kali Dayton 52:29
They don’t realize that so much of that is because the stroke volume has declined over the last four weeks, they’ve been sedated and immobile. They don’t see you after that month is different than when you first come in, you have certain expectations for patients for what should be normal, or why things are happening.

But your body is…. you’ve lost 100 pounds and just like the rest of your muscles atrophied So did your heart. So it goes faster to keep up or to compensate. And that is a common thing to get sedation to control that heart rate. But controlling vitals with sedation is not appropriate. You’ll never find that in a textbook. That doesn’t treat the cause of it.

Drew Brophy 53:11
Well, the other problem was is the doctors were not available usually at night. And I can remember the cardiologist she was a woman. And she talked to me, I guess there was something about the the reading that there was like a false bump in front of my heartbeat that was making the rate seem higher than it was it was reading like a little bump.

And she explained it to me very well. And I was able to give her a thumbs up that I understood. And then a new nurse would come in that was not, you know, prepared and would be freaking out about this. You know, reading. And in my mind, I knew that it was the wrong reading. The cardiologist just explained it to me. And I’m like, how did the cardiologist explain it to her or to me and not to hurt? And it seemed like with every shift change. Your whole program was starting over. And nobody knew what was going on with you. They didn’t even know why I was there. And

Kali Dayton 54:19
With thatm sounds like you were you’re in a coma for four weeks, and you weren’t able to write your first note until a week later. So for five weeks, you were not able to really communicate to the outside world.

Drew Brophy 54:32
Yeah,

Kali Dayton 54:33
How did that impact you?

Drew Brophy 54:37
Well, you feel like a prisoner number one.

You don’t understand why things happen the way they did. It’s very frustrating. You feel like you’re gonna die at any time. Again, you’re totally dependent upon the system that you’re witnessing failed. And you’re like, oh my gosh, you know, like, here I am locked my body and I’m paying attention and kind of see what’s going on how come every other person that comes in this room has no idea what’s going on.

Um, it made me furious. You know, it’s just, I don’t like to get angry about it. Because there again, I have a lot of gratitude for the fact that they saved me. But I got to admit that I’m amazed they didn’t kill me. So it’s like a double edged sword. And I want people to know that I’m grateful for these people. They enduring something just as bad as what I went through the there were a bomb was handed to the owner, and they were trying to disabuse it.

But you know, it’s very frustrating when there’s a problem and they can’t get hold of a doctor, something as simple as constipation. You know, I would feel that pain. You know, you feel like all of a sudden, there’s, you know, watermelon coming out of you. And you know, those drugs paralyze your body, it won’t come out. And they don’t do anything about it. And they’re like, we can’t get a hold of the doctor.

So you’re just going to solver that happened to me so many times that, you know, like, it was just brutal, like, so, like I, you know, I don’t want to complain too much because they’re going on live. But the simple things that would be an eat should be an easy fix on just work or the awareness of what’s happening from the patient’s perspective is important.

That’s why I feel like I’m a good witness to this type of ordeal. I haven’t started talking about it due to the fact that one on offend those that helped me and I don’t want to appear ungrateful. I am, all I want to do is to shed light on the fact that there’s got to be a better way to do this. Most people did not survive what I survived. So I’m here to tell you what it was, like, all the way through.

And it was absolutely brutal. I’m amazed that the psychologist said that my mind was fine. He said, “I don’t know how you wouldn’t do it all that without anger, number one or immense fear.” But I attribute that to the time in a coma and what I saw in the coma one year ago, then you’re done. put me at ease with everything. While also

Maria Brophy 58:05
I think it really helps to have family around we, we my our son and I didn’t let two wheeling let a day go by that he didn’t have visitors the entire time. And, you know, the entire every day. We never left him alone. during visiting hours. There was always somebody there. It was usually me or some villain. And then we had friends that would come or go, you know, and other family. And we were all doing physical therapy on him.

Drew Brophy 58:40
You know, the hospital was the first hospital was not able to do any physical therapy on me. Frank was able to get me out of bed two or three times. They had one time a physical therapist came, but I was too debilitated for them to do anything and they never came back. I didn’t start any physical therapy until the second hospital sometime in February.

Maria Brophy 59:18
Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, like February 1,

Kali Dayton 59:22
but you had already sat, I mean, you were trach’d, and you just sat there for basically another month or so.

Drew Brophy 59:27
They didn’t roll me. Every once in a while. I would get a nurse that was adamant about rolling me around. My I had no but I was sitting on bones. As my body came back online, I was able to move my toes my hands. I couldn’t move my left hand because there were so much stuff plugged into me and the ventilator tubing and everything was over. So my left arm was more atrophied than my right just because I was doing everything with my right.

Kali Dayton 1:00:01
And you couldn’t lift ventilator tubing up, you were that week, I just want that is significant that that was weighing you down. Because for most of us, that’s not heavy stuff, but that’s how weak you were.

Drew Brophy 1:00:13
But it was also just the, you know, the pain from the different things plugged into me. And the pain of the trach itself. You know, in my throat, if that thing moved at all, I mean, imagine having a big hole in your throat. You did not want that thing moving. Because it I mean stuff like, you know, giant piece of tubing in your throat and open wound.

Kali Dayton 1:00:41
Tracheostomies became so common during COVID. And it was like, “the more the sooner the better.” Which obviously, the sooner you do a trach the sooner most patients get to wake up and mobilize. So their outcomes were better. I don’t think it’s so much to do with it freak as people think it does. Right? It has more to do with being awake and mobile. But because it became so common, I think people assumed that they were benign or comfortable or totally fine. They didn’t really affect patients. But you’re saying it was uncomfortable. It was painful. How do you feel about your scar has, like two years later? How has the trach affected you?

Drew Brophy 1:01:23
My voice has changed from it being on my voice box. Sometimes it hurts. I don’t like looking at it because it reminds me of what had happened. One of the hardest parts was when I finally beat the ventilator you have to do three days without it. And I had a team of respiratory therapists that believed I could do it. The doctors did not.

And it wasn’t easy. It was you know, it was super hard. But I did it. And the doctor was convinced that I was going to have to be put back on the ventilator. So they left the trach in with me breathing through a cannula through my nose. But my nose was clogged with stuff. So I couldn’t breathe through it.

And I would put the candle in my mouth. I was trying to tell them that I can’t breathe and they would not clean up my nose. I don’t know why they gave me the saline solution but they would not let me keep it to try to loosen the stuff in my nose. I spend all night trying to with my hand barely moving it trying to get this stuff out of my nose.

And when I finally did a thing blood came out of my nose about that long it was like a snake. I don’t know what it was. But my nose had been blocked off for so long. My whole nasal cavity was full of stuff. And I can remember doing that and nobody helped me do it. I had my nostril at once. I finally got one nostril open. And this is why I’m off the ventilator on the on the still have the trade. I forget how much oxygen I was on. It was quite a bit. I think it was like six and a half liters. But, you know, I my nose got too clogged, I would have to put the thing in my mouth.

And I don’t know how long it was they left me like that. I think it was about a week. I breathe through the thing in my mouth through the little tube of the tray. I didn’t know what a tray it looked like. So I had no idea. I didn’t think it was that big. But I remember the day the doctor woke came in early in the morning one morning. And he just looked at me like oh my gosh, you know, like I was awake.

And like my diaphragm was messed up. So I was having to do this weird jerk movement to breathe. And I was just so focused on just doing his thing. And I did that for days. And he came in one morning and it looked like I’d probably been up all night making sure not to breathe. And he just went oh my gosh, like what am I doing? He goes we gotta get that trick out right now. He assembled a whole team. They came in and within 10 minutes they were around me and he pulled that thing out.

Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Like he pulled that thing out. And I can instantly talk. I had a raspy voice. I was like I said, I think I said some cuss words. I was like, you know, why do you believe that thing in there for so long, but I instantly went to cobra. Oh my God, it was amazing. It was like I was being held underwater for four and a half months.

And I saw that trick. It looked disgusting. And a soul a little too. It was like a little strong. I couldn’t fathom how in the world I was breathing through that little straw for so long. And that’s the day I started getting better. I’m really good. I could start doing physical. I couldn’t do physical therapy before that.

Kali Dayton 1:05:51
Because it’s so hard to breathe.

Drew Brophy 1:05:54
Yeah. And then I started trying to sit up by myself. Um, I started moving into a wheelchair and began being able to do the wheelchair myself. I was a double assist. Patient, so it wasn’t qualifying for the real physical therapy. They got me on parallel bars, double assist. I could take a step and I couldn’t put on weight on my body. The physical therapy police got to vote on whether to take me.

Maria Brophy 1:06:38
That was the third facility he went to.

Drew Brophy 1:06:42
They took a vote- all the administrators voted “no”, all the therapists voted “yes”. On the one vote. And yeah, it was held getting my body but learning to walk and all that.

Kali Dayton 1:07:01
When you have such a rigorous schedule, even when you went home, you did so much rehab, I followed you on Instagram over that time. And I just remember seeing you came home I just thought, one What a miracle. And two, long road ahead. And now I see you surfing again. Yeah, that is just the power of movement of muscles, physical therapy, occupational therapy, amazing testimonial.

Maria Brophy 1:07:32
And the power of the mind.

Drew Brophy 1:07:34
I mean, you, you got to have a strong mind to deal with all this stuff, you have to have a loving family. Um, you have to have some angels in there. You have to have some lucky breaks. Um, I did not think it was going to be possible, but I was not giving up. Ice still on us don’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense that you can come back from zero.

Kali Dayton 1:08:09
With the body, to even take your own breath, to now surfing, and you’re back to doing your incredible artwork and living your whole life. That is really astounding and inspiring. And it truly is a miracle. Very few people get to come back like that.

Drew Brophy 1:08:29
Yeah, and I want people to know that, you know, they gotta have a strong mind now before something bad happens to them. They need to have a strong family now. And our support support system. You know, that’s why you’re good to people. That’s why you, you strive to do good in this world. I feel like everything that ever ever did good came back to me during this time. Yeah.

Kali Dayton 1:08:59
I can tell you a whole community that was cheering for you.

Drew Brophy 1:09:03
Yeah, so it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, now that I look back on it all it is everything had to come together and make this possible. And like I said, it doesn’t seem like it could be possible, but it is. Nobody can do the work for you. It sucks. You if you can’t breathe, you can’t walk and if you can’t walk you can’t get better. So it was like this, this weird thing where and I couldn’t gain weight because I couldn’t eat.

You know, I desperately wanted to eat something I couldn’t chew my muscles were atrophied. I couldn’t swallow. You know every time we took a bite of something you thought you’re gonna choke to death you know the fear of falling the you I couldn’t lift my arm up, I couldn’t hold a coffee cup. I wanted a cup of coffee. So bad I couldn’t lift it. I’m trying to, you know

Kali Dayton 1:10:12
That’s I think that’s stuff that people rarely think about, you know, we think that patients are sleeping, that we’re sparing them trauma and harm, and that this will help them survive. And sometimes, obviously, medically induced comas are unavoidable in some cases. But the sooner we stop them, the more likely this kind of severity and not being able to hold a coffee cup not even able to chew, we really can prevent that in most patients and ICU survivors.

And us sharing this with us gives us so much better insight and empathy. For our patients. There are so many wonderful clinicians out there that will hear this and apply this to the next patients I take care of. Your insight is helping us shift the culture, the perspective, even the jokes that are made in and out of the ICU, and I’m so grateful for everything that you’ve shared. Any last thoughts for the ICU community?

Drew Brophy 1:11:06
Just thank you so much for helping all the people. Um, your actions make a difference. Even just your kindness, a smile, a lock eyes, a touch of the hand, I had an original my head all night ones. And I might not have made it without that. You know, there’s so many things. But you know, the work that they’re doing is I had no idea, the trauma they were having to go through on a daily basis.

And it’s not easy. But it makes a difference. Even if the person passes, at least they don’t pass in fear. Yeah, they know that they are loved. And they find that out as soon as they cross over anyway. But in that moment, it is fearful.

Maria Brophy 1:12:02
You know, and I have one less thing to say. I mean, one thing that I feel like we did, that really helped drew do the impossible, which was to get off the oxygen after we got him home, getting walking again and get him surfing again. We surrounded him with therapists that believed that he could get off the oxygen because that was another thing we were told he would be on act for the rest of his life.

And what I learned through this is with every step of him doing the impossible, it he was surrounded by some people who believed in what’s possible with that believe we took the action steps towards it. And with the action steps, we made it happen. Yeah,

Kali Dayton 1:12:52
I feel like Frank, that one nurse in the ICU was the one to set that precedence. This guy is going to survive, and we’re gonna get him up out of the bed because he’s gonna survive. And you fall Have you sought more Frakes throughout your journey. And so the impact of these clinicians to change the total trajectory of your hospitalization and the rest of your life is amazing to me. So thank you so much for being an example to the entire IC community and ICU survivors and I look forward to continuing to watch your journey and learning from the trophies. Thank you so much.

Drew Brophy 1:13:28
Thank you. Thank you. Welcome

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

 

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