If you have a loved one on a breathing machine, this book is a must-read. Read this book if you are a non-medical person and want to know about mechanical ventilators, patients on breathing machines, or respirators. It makes sense of a critical situation in a medical environment that is "foreign" to nearly everyone.

This book is written by a respiratory therapist to help the average person understand more about ventilators and the ICU environment. Mechanical ventilators are life support breathing machines or respirators that are used in ICU to keep people breathing and help them stay alive while their life threatening problems are being reversed. When loved ones are on ventilators it is a crisis that few understand.

The first chapter is a quick reference with FAQs addressing most of the questions that might come to mind. These questions are organized to refer to the remainder of the book which explains in lay person's terms the details and complexities of ventilator patients from the initial respiratory failure, to placement on a ventilator, ventilator patient management, weaning off the ventilator and how ventilators are used for specific diseases that result in the need for life support.

This book makes plain language out of normal respiratory anatomy and physiology, why people stop breathing, how COVID-19 ventilator patients are being treated, and discusses practical issues of life, death, and brain death. Simple but informative diagrams and pictures make clear medical information passed on to family members or significant others by doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists. There are parts of the book that get complicated because this is a complex situation. If the reader has trouble with some of the explanations just skip on over it as each chapter is a new part of this process and may provide understanding to previous topics.

This book is recommended for everyone who has the circumstance of having someone they know on a breathing machine.

This is not a medical text, but could easily have value to respiratory therapists, nurses and doctors in the ICU.