life and death

today I saw a man literally come back to life. whilst the events had taken place over a course of approx 10 days, the progress has been remarkable. an elderly man who suffered a fall and a brain bleed, managed in intensive care and later recovered on the wards. Unfortunately for this man, he then developed blood clots in his lungs which sent him back to intensive care. this was where I first met him and heard of his story. The ICU is a scary place. Machines, tubes, needles, bottles, scurrying of doctors and nurses. Background noises of pumps, machines, patients coughing, choking, gurgling, the list is endless. Here I saw the same man, hooked up to the same instruments and looked after like every other patient with a serious problem. here every patient is broken down into numbers and percentages. the wonders of modern medicine are endless. where a man once laid on the brink of death, where family members had given up home on improvement and signed an advance medical directive. this man is now walking up in the wards, cheerful and talking. if you didnt see him over the course of the week, you could not fathom the strife he was in.