One hundred days on ICU, by Juan Ramón Villanueva

The respirator sends puffs of oxygen getting tired lungs.

A tube attached to a pump carries liquid food to the stomach; From the neck parts a bunch of catheters responsible for partitioning through the veins all medications necessary to repair the remains of a damaged health.

In the Hall of the lost health walls become wide, disappear, and make an eternal world clock. Nothing is what it seems, and minutes simulate hours and hours, days, and adding, nerves, longings and hopes fade in months that pass unchanged just without hardly joys.

One hundred days on ICU.

One hundred moments of desperate waiting; one hundred moments of risks, errors, delays, relapse, successes, care and wonders.

Tracheotomy, infections. An episode of septic shock that almost ends with everything: kidneys needing support, arteries requiring help, and lungs that refuse to cooperate. Loss of weight, loss of strength, loss of hope, coming and going.

One hundred days of ICU and life remains the same.

The patient feels it all together; He is sometimes frustrated and sometimes forgets. Because perhaps it is better to forget. And others observed, between tired and powerless, the days pass. Each gift is a Pyrrhic victory. Each loss expectancy, years of getaway life.

And I wonder how they live 100 days there. And I wonder if they will do a hundred more are missing.

The world steps with step slow into the Hall without end of the lost health. But merciless passes through the patient and his family. And nothing will return them the standing joy, rusty hope, the lost illusion.Everything passes. Nothing remains. But to know how and what will be the price to pay.

To continue to pay, until you finish.”