I
mentioned pulmonary fibrosis in my last post. We had three big cases
on our ICU in April, all three of them pretty difficult.
Pulmonary
fibrosis is essentially scar tissue-- the formation of thick, tough,
fibrous tissue that grows through and fucks with your lungs until you
die of not being able to breathe. Imagine a transporter accident like
in The Fly, but between a pile of wet cardboard and your dick, and
you’ve got a little of the idea.
The
treatments for pulmonary fibrosis include nebulizers to help open the
parts that aren’t scarred up; steroids to reduce the growth of scar
tissue (not always effective); and a host of other last-chance drugs
that might have been helpful, maybe once, to some other pt whose
pulmonary fibrosis took a little longer than usual to kill them. It
might have been another drug, or luck, or fucking homeopathy for all
the proof we have, but if it might have worked, we’re probably
gonna try it.
The
cure for pulmonary fibrosis is a lung transplant.
So
when our first pulm fibrosis pt turned up eligible for an eventual
transplant, we transferred them to the hospital where they would live
until they either died or went on the table. We don’t do lung
transplants here. They’re complicated.
