Overview

Surviving the ICU is not the end of the story. In I Hear U, Michael Paul Patrick continues his unflinching memoir of life after catastrophic illness, picking up where survival left off-not in triumph, but in aftermath. If I See U was about being watched, restrained, and kept alive, I Hear U is about what happens when the world resumes and no one is listening. After near-death and prolonged critical illness, Patrick returns to his life as a trial attorney, husband, and father, only to discover that survival has quietly dismantled everything he once relied on-his body, his confidence, his career, and his sense of self. Lingering trauma, Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS), and institutional disbelief follow him far beyond the hospital walls, into courtrooms, conference rooms, insurance examinations, and his own home. This is not a recovery story in the conventional sense. I Hear U is a reckoning-with systems that demand proof of suffering long after survival, with a profession built on endurance he can no longer sustain, with a marriage reshaped by shared trauma, and with the isolating realization that the most lasting damage of critical illness is often invisible. Through deeply intimate scenes with his wife and children, harrowing encounters with insurers and medical gatekeepers, and the quiet erosion of an identity forged over a lifetime, Patrick traces the slow loss of the person he used to be. Along the way, he finds something unexpected: community. Survivor support groups, fellow patients, caregivers, and advocates who speak a language he didn't know existed-one that finally names what he and his family have been living with since discharge. I Hear U gives voice to the millions of ICU survivors and loved ones navigating life after survival, often without guidance, recognition, or resources. It is a memoir about listening-to a changed body, to fractured relationships, to others walking the same unseen path-and about learning that being heard can be its own form of survival. This is Book II of The Life After Trilogy, a three-part memoir series exploring what comes after near-death: survival, witness, and ultimately, acceptance. For readers of literary memoir, medical narratives, and anyone who has lived through trauma that did not end when the crisis passed, I Hear U offers recognition, honesty, and the radical permission to be changed.

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