Spreadsheets Can Save Him
Spreadsheets can save him by Kent Chadwick Where’s the pattern? What ratio will show he’s getting better, that he’ll breathe again on his own? The ventilator pushes puffs of warm air through our son’s trachea every time his brain asks for oxygen, into his second set of lungs, damaged too soon by pneumonia, scarred and stiffened. The machine ka-shooshing eighteen or more times a minute to make Luke breathe when he needs, and it graphs his breath, reads his volumes, scoring the resistance—centimeters of water pressure—ready to alarm and warn of dangers, displaying seven variables in LED orange with each breath, repeatedly—and I stare. My hope has fallen to this new machine, that maybe, maybe its gentler aid can coax Luke’s lungs into recovery. What numbers, what ratios show progress?, something the doctors no longer expect. Is it peak pressures to tidal volumes? 89 to 760 Or his diaphragm’s nerve activity to the ventilator’s support level? 62, 70 to 1.5 What is significant? What is just ...