Coronavirus
Out of context: Reply #2629
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- maquito0
Long-ish read. Intense. Worth it.
Clara Giambruno is a pediatrician living in NY. She is the sister of an ex-coworker. For years, she’s been working with children admitted to the ICU of hospitals in NY. One of them, SUNY, became the center of care for patients with COVID-19. Clara treated patients and the disease got her. She wrote a letter about what she saw and felt working on the front line of the battle against the virus and her sister shared it:
Dear All:
I am writing to share my experiences during the Covid19 epidemic in New York City. I usually work as a doctor serving children admitted to the ICUs of various hospitals in New York City. In particular SUNY, which was one of the most affected by being designated as a Covid center in New York State.
My life and my colleagues’ changed dramatically as a result of the epidemic. Both the pediatric floors and the pediatric ICUs where we worked began to fill up with adults with Covid, some in very serious condition. The patients I saw ranged from 28 to 75 years old. I haven't seen a child in weeks. Everything was filled in a few days and we were not enough. The seriously ill patients overflowed the ITCs and we prepared as best we could the intermediate rooms.
Seeing in such a few days such a large number of patients with respiratory failure was traumatic. There was a call in the speakerphone for the anesthetists to tube a patient every 5 minutes. What impressed me most was my visit to the emergency room when I tried to find one of our nurses who had come in sick with great respiratory distress. It was impossible to find her in that sea of patients that overflowed the rooms and filled the corridors and when they saw you pass-by they tried to grab you asking you for help. An image of despair that I still try to get out of my mind. Unfortunately she also ended up tubed-up, although luckily she is already breathing without help.
Something very sad and I think in some cases unfair was that these patients were isolated from their loved ones as a precaution. I did my best to talk to each family member of my patients by phone to update them and sometimes I was able to put them in touch on WhatsApp so they could see each other. But it was difficult for them to communicate because they were very ill and in some cases tubed. I felt the anguish that all the relatives went through. I especially regret that many were unable to say goodbye to their loved ones.
All the doctors, nurses and respiratory technicians from the different departments work together during all this. Your specialty doesn’t matter. Several of us got sick with Covid and had to isolate ourselves for a while. Luckily nurses, doctors and technicians came from other states and helped and supported us enormously. There was a huge spirit of solidarity. Donations of food and face masks and hats also came to protect us. It is surprising that we did not have the necessary protection but we adapted by stretching the use of masks and robes, and cleaning the plastic facial protections every day after finishing seeing the patients. An improvement has been seen for a week. We have less income in the hospital. There are fewer calls on the speaker to tube-up. We are all calmer. Sometimes it seems that all this madness that we lived was just a dream.
New York City is still half empty. In the subway we are just a few and all with masks. In the buses they make you enter from the back door so as not to expose the driver and you don't pay. More than once I have been touched by a “rebel” who screams and protests without a mask. I have wanted to explain that this is real. That people are dying, but I still haven't. All these people protesting the measures would have to spend a day in the hospital. I think it is difficult to understand until what time the suffering, the deaths, the trailers for the corpses.
The uncertainty of how and when we will return to a certain normality still remains. We learned and are learning about different medications and the behavior of the virus. But we will not have a vaccine for at least 12 to 18 months. We will not be able to prevent the virus from advancing but we can slow it down and protect the most fragile until a vaccine is released. There will be other waves of infections, but if we take measures they will be smaller and manageable by the health system.
At first I lived thinking every day that I would go to work if that was the day that I would catch it, until it happened. Luckily I had a mild case. Although it is still not well understood how long the immunity can last, I feel calmer when I see patients with Covid. In a few days I hope to do the test to see my antibodies. This is the test that I hope will be carried out on a large scale soon and that will determine who has had Covid and probably has antibodies that will protect them. I am convinced that there is a very large number of people in New York who have had it without knowing it and might be still spreading it.
I say goodbye and I hope that all of you and your loved ones are safe.
Clara.
- NYC healthcare workers have it the worst. So much cronyism from Cuomo on down, death levels worse than all 3rd world countries, yes India too!robotron3k
- IMO Cuomo is has bumped up the body count so the Government will foot the bill using Medicaid. An test costs $7k and ICU costs $40k a dayrobotron3k
- death levels are the worst, but also faked? make up your mind, bobomonospaced
- Bobo's drunk. I think sometimes he forgets which character he is trying to play.PhanLo
- the very idea that he alone knows cuomo is going to get away with some elaborate plan to bill medicaid, it's so fucking crazy weirdmonospaced
- well everyone in robos world view are mad evil, except for trump. Trump is glorious leader. Hail trump.inteliboy