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The Gadget That Saved My Mother’s Life
Why you NEED a pulse oximeter in a COVID-19 world
If you read no further than the end of this paragraph, that’s perfectly okay. My objective is to save lives, so I’ll put the absolutely most crucial words right up front. Here they are: BUY A PULSE OXIMETER. Today.
How did a pulse oximeter save my mother’s life when COVID-19 hit our household last month? Here’s our story.
Silent hypoxia (also called “silent hypoxemia”) is a frighteningly real possibility* with COVID-19. Silent hypoxia is the condition wherein your oxygen saturation drops dangerously low without you even realizing you’re in the throes of a life-threatening emergency. (*Link also summarizes health risks at various oxygen saturation levels.)
I had read earlier this year that COVID-19 was causing silent hypoxia in some people, but frankly, when my family got sick, it never even occurred to us to ask if we could borrow a pulse oximeter from anyone, much less purchase one ourselves. These were devices we’d seen in doctors’ offices and hospitals; we didn’t realize that just anybody could buy them, and very affordably at that.
In other words, I didn’t know that silent hypoxia was something you could detect outside of a medical setting — but it is.
