"We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care
by Lawrence Martin, M.D.
Table of Contents

NOTE: "We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care can be downloaded in its entirety as an e-book from 1st Books Library ($4.95). The book can also be ordered in trade paperback format for $13.50. For purchasing the e-book or print versions, please go to 1st Books Library and enter part of the book's title or the author in their search engine. Below are the first few paragraphs of CRUSADE

Harlan Tembo has chronic bronchitis, a result of smoking cigarettes since he was 15. At age 57 Mr. Tembo was brought to Memorial Medical Center's emergency room one Monday in respiratory distress, blue, semi-conscious, and about to die. His diagnosis: exacerbation of bronchitis and acute respiratory failure. He was intubated, connected to a ventilator and sent up to MICU. His hospital care reflected a quiet revolution in medicine. Before ventilators were available for patients like Mr. Tembo that is, before the 1960's he would probably have died. Now patients with acute and otherwise fatal lung failure are often saved by just a few days of 'ventilator support.' Even chronic patients with end-stage lung disease can benefit if their respiratory failure is acute and reversible. One of Memorial's chronic lung disease patients has been intubated at least nine times for acute respiratory failure. For Mr. Tembo, this was his first time intubated.

As late as 1967 there was debate about the utility of artificial ventilation in respiratory failure. Back then ventilators were much scarcer; now they are commonplace in every hospital. The only real debate over ventilator use today involves ethical issues, not medical ones.

After four days of artificial ventilation in MICU, Mr. Tembo could breathe on his own, unassisted by machine. It was time to begin my no-smoking crusade.