Intubation: A tube is forced down the patient’s throat, which allows them to breathe but costs them their voice. Another tube is routed to the stomach, providing calories without satiation. And through the jugular: sedation without rest.
No one mentions the isolation, the frustration of trying to communicate with hand gestures and pictograms, the cloth restraints we use to tie the patient's hands down if they reach too often for the tube, stripping them even of gestures.
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Ernesto Barbieri is a registered nurse whose writing has appeared in The Believer, Iowa Review, Midway Journal, Fourteen Hills, Berkeley Fiction Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Hunter College’s MFA fiction program, he is at work on a novel and a graphic memoir.
Jess Ruliffson is a graphic journalist based in Boston. She teaches at Lesley University and The Sequential Artists Workshop. See her work and connect at https://www.patreon.com/jessruliffson and www.jessruliffson.com.
Editors: Jim Dao, Marjorie Pritchard, Heather Hopp-Bruce, and Abbi Matheson
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Project manager: Abbi Matheson
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Developer: Andrew Nguyen
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Are you a nurse with a story to tell? Please send it to letter@globe.com.
When accidents happen
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When accidents happen
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When accidents happen
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