Opinion: When the coughing stops and the sense of helplessness begins
2b: 67y male. Oxygen face mask. Better than his neighbor.4b: 57y male. Intubated.5b: 63y female. Oxygen face mask. On the phone. Breathing hard.You’re not even halfway done. All covid-19. As you walk around, you flash back: Not since treatingYou asked yourself then. You ask yourself now: Are we doing the right thing? Are we having an impact?“Turn down the drips. Maybe that’ll work?”“Try these old-school meds.
We struggle. Because we still don’t know what works. Last week, a colleague cared for a woman with cardiac arrest from covid-19. And the woman’s daughter. At the same time.Today, one of your patients is on oxygen struggling to breathe. You try to talk to her. But she is watching her mom, intubated, on a ventilator, in a bed across the ER.
The head nurse comes to you. Another new patient. Very sick. “He’s in bed 9. Same thing. Low oxygen.” You try to concentrate, but your thoughts are interrupted by the loudspeaker:You approach this new patient. It’s immediately clear how bad this is. He’s breathing 40 times a minute, double the normal. He can hardly speak. His oxygen dips. You put him on a face mask. His oxygen level slowly climbs. You put your hands on him. But the purple gloves feel so cold, so distant.
You try to look him in the eyes, but your goggles fog. “Hey, is there anyone I can call for you?” You get his wife on FaceTime. She sees her husband of 47 years. Breathing fast. Struggling. Alone. She hears the alarms of patients on life support in the background, struggling to stay alive. She sees you in a mask, gown and gloves.
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