Last updated on 1 April 2026
During the first few days after my “awakening,” I constantly heard mention of a certain Doctor Paul; he resolved all complications and unexpected events.
Both doctors and nurses turned to him in case of doubt, and as soon as an emergency arose, he was the first to be called.
In short, more than a doctor, he was a kind of superhero; he was always present, and if he wasn’t, he would arrive within a very short time (seconds).
Reality or hallucination? I still do not precisely understand; it seemed so real that it is difficult to consider it a hallucination.
Perhaps a mix of the two?
A few days after I woke up, my wife came to visit me and on that occasion she asked: “Don’t you recognize him?”
Personally, I didn’t feel like I had ever seen him; furthermore, with the mask on, it was difficult to recognize people.
Keep in mind that during that period I was pumped full of drugs, I still had the tracheostomy and the nasogastric tube, as well as venous and arterial devices entering through my arms and neck, and to top it all off, I also had a urinary catheter.
Being dazed and having hallucinations could be considered a “normal” condition.
In any case, I shook my head “no.” And she said: “But it’s Paul, our friend, don’t you remember?”
I was surprised; I knew Paul worked in the hospital, but I didn’t remember him being a doctor.
Well, yes, I had convinced myself that Paul was the Super Doctor who solved all the problems for us patients.
Instead, Paul is a dear friend of mine whom I already knew before my illness.
He is an intensive care nurse with vast experience (perhaps that is why I saw him as Doctor Paul) whom I came to appreciate as a person and as a professional during and after my hospitalization at Cardiocentro Ticino.
During my hallucinations, he was always with me, getting me out of trouble and helping me resolve the various dangerous situations I got myself into, but I will tell you more about that later.
He was one of the nurses assisting me, but not knowing my habits, he would shave me completely while I was sedated.
Yes, because I have always kept an “unshaven” beard, whereas he loved “clean,” hairless faces.
Paul is one of those “old school” nurses with incredible experience, who is always on the move (day and night) and always in contact with his patients; he continues to go from bay to bay, interpreting the patients’ status from small signs like skin color, eyelid movements, drops of sweat on the forehead… in addition to the various instruments provided in intensive care units.
A few months after my discharge from the hospital—a discharge that was… forced at my request—I invited him, his wife, and our mutual friends Maria Antonietta and Alexander to lunch.
Alexander is a real doctor, and not the fruit of my imagination.
The discharge was forced because I no longer wanted to be away from home, away from my wife, my children, and what remained of my family; yes, the loss of my parents was giving me a sense of emptiness that I could not fill.
On that splendid summer evening, thanks to my wife and the delicacies brought by Maria Antonietta and Paul’s wife, we were able to spend a wonderful evening together.
On that occasion, Paul gave me a book, in English, titled “BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT, A Surviving ECMO Story.”
At first, that gift had unsettled me, partly because of the language and secondly because of the subject matter; I had lived that experience, it had not been pleasant, and the results were not what I had expected!
Yes, I had survived, but at what price and with what damage.
For the first few days after the dinner, I left the book in a corner and ignored it.
After a few weeks, I began to leaf through it, but my English is limited; I had to use my phone’s camera to photograph the pages and then translate them with software. It became very laborious!
For a while, I gave up, but the content of that book intrigued me; I wanted to know if someone else had gone through my experience, if they had gone through what I had gone through.
However, my English did not allow me to read it.
I tried to find an Italian copy, but the book has not been translated into other languages.
I tried to find a digital copy to feed into translation software, but that option was not feasible either.
I was curious to know how Adam York had faced that terrible experience, even though it wasn’t about Covid—it was in 2018, so before the pandemic.
Recently, in mid-November 2023, I made up my mind; I had the book cut at a stationer’s so that I could digitize the content using a scanner.
Now I am translating the entire book, one chapter a day, using translation software and then revising the translation from a literary perspective into Italian.
It is a lot of work, but it allows me to read the book more deeply and to grasp the feelings that Adam wanted to convey with his writing.
And why not… maybe I could ask the author if he is interested in having his book translated into Italian.
To be continued….
This book, the suggestion from Carmen (Paul’s colleague), and the meeting with the post-intensive care self-help group at Cardiocentro Ticino convinced and motivated me to create this blog and, in the future, perhaps even a book and/or a documentary video.
