Don't Let the Flu Send You to the ICU



In my new post for Mango Health, I revisit the medical adventure and some of the factors that brought me to the ICU:

"In early March, I got the flu. For the first five days, it was pretty miserable, but it was just the flu. And then things got interesting. The influenza went to town on my lungs, and because of my asthma – despite it being fairly mild – I developed pneumonia. This made it hard to breathe, and I was admitted to the hospital. 

 Within days, I was in the ICU and then on a ventilator in an induced coma. I no longer just had pneumonia. Now I had acquired respiratory distress syndrome. I came very, very close to not making it several times. By the end of it all, I’d also gone through an emergency tracheostomy, leaving behind a small scar at the base of my throat.

 Somehow, I survived." 

I learned a lot from this experience, some of which is about preventing that happening again. You can read more on the Mango Health blog.

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