This account of what it’s like inside a COVID ICU in Tallahassee, Florida is chilling. I don’t know how they do it:
The curtain divides every patient room in two. On one side, a man gasps for air every 20 seconds as nurses gather around his bedside. They hold hands, hug one another and comfort the man as best they can.
“Knowing that their family can’t be there at that time, you (the nurse) are the one that is combing hair, playing music,” says registered nurse Emily Brown, who works at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare. “We’re praying; we’re holding their hands.”
One nurse uses a rag to wipe his eyes. From the other side of the curtain, another man asks for a glass of water. A nurse chuckles. She says, “I think we can get you that.” He doesn’t know his roommate was just given morphine to provide comfort in his final moments.
TMH has three levels of COVID patients cared for in different areas of the hospital. Green level patients have the least severe cases and should soon return home. Yellow level patients have moderate cases and typically need some form of oxygen. Red level is for those most likely on ventilators and considered COVID intensive care patients. Red level, most often, is where people die. And people are dying. Daily. At a faster rate than ever before.
At least two people have succumbed to the virus each day this week at TMH. More than 60 people have died so far in August.This week, Tallahassee has experienced the largest surge in cases and hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. […]
Brown, 23, is from Bristol, a rural town where being vaccinated is uncommon.She started as a nurse at TMH in February of 2020, not knowing what was in store as she began her career. “COVID is all I know as a new nurse,” Brown says. “I don’t even know if I would know how to take care of a regular person at this point. If a patient can breathe, that’s good for me.”
Brown recruited best friend Sally Fowler, 21, to join her at TMH. Fowler’s experience was similar to Brown’s. She began as a nurse when the COVID floor had reopened into a normal hospital floor. About a month later, the second surge hit.
“For this to be my first dose of nursing, it was a shell shock, because you don’t learn about COVID in nursing school,” Brown says. “You don’t learn how to take care of these patients or what lab values to look for.”Just last week, Fowler lost her first patient. The woman had been on a ventilator. “Patients get tired. That is a lot of oxygen coming at them all the time,” Brown says. “They get irritable, they get anxious and the meds we give them for anxiety and irritability mess with oxygenation.”
Brown was in the room with Fowler as she consoled her patient. They helped her make one last call to her family. Brown moved her oxygen mask just enough so she could talk to them. They recall the woman begging her family — “Please, just let me go. I can’t do this anymore.”The family told her, “You’re the strongest mother I know. Thank you for fighting this long.” But the family asked the nurses, “Can you please make this quick?” “I remember that conversation and that’s something I will remember 10 years from now,” Brown says.
The two best friends have come to terms with working in the COVID unit. They do their best to be a bright spot in their patients’ days and find hope in some of the heaviest days.
“One patient walking out of here to three bad patients is so rewarding, to see that one patient that we’ve made a difference in. Because this thing is scary.”
At this point in the narrative we have another story of two people who didn’t think they could get COVID winding up in the ICU. We’ve all read so many of those stories.
Regina Bolde, 50, has been a nurse for almost half of her life. She’s worked at TMH on the same floor since 2015. Since the start of the pandemic, Bolde’s view of her career has shifted. “I never saw myself being a hospice nurse,” she says in the bustling yellow level COVID hall. “When COVID came, we started doing everything.”
Last Christmas, Bolde had a patient who was rapidly deteriorating. The man, about 60, begged Bolde to stay and help him as his anxiety mounted. Bolde held his hand till he was transferred to the COVID ICU floor. He didn’t make it. “It was heartbreaking,” she recalls. “But we have no control over death and life.”
Bolde has helped patients with contacting their families to say goodbye in their final moments. She helped a father FaceTime his son; then she and the other nurses stepped out to give them privacy. From the other side of the door, Bolde could hear their conversation. “It’s OK, Dad. We’re gonna be all right. It’s OK to go.”
Bolde is praying for the pandemic to end. “People think it’s not real but I try to tell them that this is real and people suffer a lot and they die,” she says. “In one week we can have three or five people die.”
Bolde says she tells everyone who will listen: Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Practice social distancing. Stop the spread.
Unfortunately, the Florida political leadership under Governor Death refuses to deal with this crisis in a responsible manner so it’s going to spread until the unvaccinated are either recovered or dead.
Get a load of what these nurses have to go through in the ICU all day:
The halls of the yellow level COVID unit are filled with nurses covered in PPE head to toe, without a patch of skin showing. They work from the halls rather than the nurses’ station to keep a close watch on all their charges. If a patient is low on oxygen, they can hear the beeping of the machines quicker.
Many stand at their computers with their elbows propped on the walls holding a portable fan towards their faces. Sweat drips from foreheads as they are suited up and masked to protect themselves. “It’s very physically draining,” says Kelly Clark, a former travel nurse who has since found a permanent place on staff at TMH. “We can’t leave the unit to use the restroom. We can’t drink anything unless we are outside.”
To leave the COVID unit, you have to “doff” (take off) your gown, booties, hair net, bunny suit, shield and gloves, sanitizing in between each piece removed. This must be done every time someone wants to eat, drink, or use the restroom. Then a new set of personal protective equipment must be “donned” (put on) before reentering the unit. […]
When it’s time for patients to eat a meal, the process is time-consuming. Nurses have to individually feed patients because of the oxygen masks on their faces. “During that whole time there’s typically someone crashing or we’re dealing with something else,” Clark says.
For Clark, it’s extremely difficult to see patients interact with family members through video calls and hearing the conversations they share. Imagine “having to tell them, ‘No, I can’t let you come up here and see your loved one,’ ” Clark says.
The younger the patient, the harder it is for Clark and other nurses to watch their health decline. Patients have respiratory systems that are ravaged by the virus; it can take them 20 days on average before they’re released. They’re not back to normal but they are no longer in isolation. They are no longer contagious but may have lingering side effects caused by COVID, including lung and other organ damage. […]
COVID patients are constantly being pumped with oxygen. It’s time-consuming and tiring. TMH Chief Clinical Officer Ryan Smith, also a registered nurse, had the opportunity to pick up a shift in one of the COVID units a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to experience firsthand what the nurses, respiratory therapists and staff go through.
That night he had four patients to tend to. “The first part of my shift, I had my first few patients look at me and say, ‘Don’t let me die,’ ” Smith says.
Smith took time to speak with nurses on shift with him and learned what all that oxygen did to patients. Some doctors came to the gut-wrenching conclusion that life in the COVID unit involves spending long periods of time among the “talking dead.”
“As soon as you remove them from the devices they no longer made it,” Smith recalls. “To watch how quickly they dwindle down is the hardest thing for me.”
Nurses and staff struggle daily to wean patients off oxygen. Too often, when it seems like patients are ready to breathe on their own, they quickly get worse. “The ‘talking dead’ didn’t make sense to me until I saw it firsthand,” Smith says. “It’s how quickly they decompensate when they don’t have that oxygen.”
Smith pauses. “The rest of the world can’t see what goes on behind these doors,” he says. “We want COVID to go away, but the reality is that it is here. It’s real. It impacts a lot more people than it should.”
No kidding. This is a living nightmare that should not be happening right now! There is no reason for all these people to be in the hospital and dying of COVID. Virtually all of them could all have been vaccinated by now — the shots are accessible, free and very effective. If everyone had gotten their shots Delta wouldn’t be spreading as it is!
It’s so tempting to just shrug and say they are getting what’s coming to them for being foolish. But what about these health care workers? They are going through hell with thing and for no good reason.
I will never understand this. Never…