Item

When lungs fail

Title (Dublin Core)

When lungs fail

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

I wish I had a sound of the oxygen concentrator my mom was on for a full month, but at the same time I'm glad that I don't. After spending 8 days in the ICU due to COVID, my mom was finally sent home only because the hospitals were full in the Fort Worth area, and there were other people much more sick than her. In a normal year, she would have been in there at least another week or two, but they got her a concentrator and sent her home to be taken care of by my Dad, sister, and me. The sound the small motor made, producing the oxygen my mom's lungs weren't capable of getting. The high-pitched beeps that sounded when the battery was low, or if the cannula in her nose wasn't properly placed on her face--all of it is probably permanently etched in my memory.
The sound that I've submitted here is an excerpt of what a nebulizer sounds like when it's turned on. In addition to the sound of the oxygen concentrator, we'd hear this sound at least twice daily as my mom inhaled her lung medications with the nebulizer, accompanied by a lot of coughing as she recovered fully.
I'm grateful that she recovered and is still doing well, but I don't think I'll ever be able to hear a sound like this without remembering what the month of January was like this year for our family.

Date (Dublin Core)

January 6, 2021

Creator (Dublin Core)

Relax Here (YouTube Channel)

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

sound

Link (Bibliographic Ontology)

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Health & Wellness
English Healthcare
English Home & Family Life
English Public Health & Hospitals

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

oxygen
oxygen concentrator
ICU
COVID-19
Fort Worth
Texas
mother
lung
sound
beep
cannula
memory
nebulizer
recovery

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Arizona State University
Sensory History
HST 643

Collection (Dublin Core)

Healthcare
Survivor Stories

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

06/30/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

07/07/2021
05/31/2023
06/27/2023

Item sets

This item was submitted on June 29, 2021 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

New Tags

I recognize that my tagging suggestions may be rejected by site curators. I agree with terms of use and I accept to free my contribution under the licence CC BY-SA