As a nation, as a state and as a county, there are way too many people who continue to underestimate the genuine danger of COVID-19 and its multiple variants. And, while anyone, vaccinated or not, can contract the virus, it is almost always the unvaccinated that end up requiring the care and expertise found only in an intensive care unit (ICU) in a hospital. Unfortunately, the odds of COVID 19 patients walking out of an ICU are not great. My daughter's best friend is an ICU nurse. In her ICU, 26 of the 32 beds are occupied with unvaccinated COVID 19 patients. Most, if not all, will die. But before they die, most will need to be on a ventilator. This requires having a breathing tube placed down their throat. She, and all the other ICU healthcare professionals stand there holding the patient’s hand and telling the patient “we got you” and “not to be scared,” all the time knowing they are probably the last people the patient is ever going to see or hear. My daughter's friend is exhausted and tired of losing people she and her co-workers fought so hard for, while watching their loved ones sob hysterically outside the glass door begging her and her co-workers to do everything for their loved one when they have already exhausted every option. Is it any wonder that despite her yearslong passion for helping the sickest patients, she’s turned down bonuses and other incentives to take additional shifts?
Closer to home, a colleague of mine contracted COVID 19 and, like many, his lungs became inflamed and filled with fluid. He needed to be put on a ventilator. Being on a ventilator means being in an ICU. He was fortunate to have access to a bed in our hospital's ICU. But, being on a ventilator means you are heavily sedated and you cannot eat, drink or talk. The ventilator provides air pressure to keep the lungs open and deliver oxygen, and the tube makes it easier for carbon dioxide to be exhaled and other wastes, like mucus, to be removed. Based on blood gas measurements, this person required air pressure so high that his tube blew out at the seal and he needed a breath rate almost three times normal. Despite exhausting every possible ventilator, paralytic, and nitric acid setting and various proning positions, the dissolved oxygen in his blood continued to decrease and the dissolved carbon dioxide continued to increase. High potassium and creatinine levels foreshadowed kidney failure. Sadly, he died, unable to even say goodbye to his loved ones, loved ones who are left to cope with this incalculable loss.
Recently, I spoke to a hospital administrator who described how America’s hospitals and health systems have stepped up in heroic and unprecedented ways to meet the challenges of COVID-19. This includes establishing testing tents, adding general and intensive care unit (ICU) bed capacity, and developing COVID-19 units to isolate and treat patients with the disease while safeguarding the health of other patients and hospital staff. All this costs money and yet hospital and health system revenues have declined sharply as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Why? Well, to protect healthcare workers and to conserve personnel protective equipment like masks, gloves, and gowns, , hospitals have been forced to cancel lucrative elective surgeries and non-essential medical, surgical and dental procedures. These losses in revenue have been met with surges in hospitalizations and ICU patients here in Carteret County and elsewhere in the United States. The Kaiser Family Foundation conservatively estimates that the cost of treating a patient with COVID-19 at more than $20,000, and over $88,000 for patients that require ventilator support. Monetary costs aside, who wants to be the triage person charged with deciding which gravely ill patient gets the next available ICU bed? Will it be a COVID patient needing a ventilator or the hemorrhaging trauma victim just brought in by ambulance? An, all this could be avoided by getting the vaccine.
Covid-19 damages patients’ lungs, which means doctors need to deliver higher oxygen concentrations to get their breathing to adequate levels. Is it any wonder that hospitals in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia are all reaching dangerously low amounts of oxygen? The hospitals can get resupplied, but most are only able to get a few days’ worth of oxygen at a time, rather than a full order. Further complicating the shortage, there is a lack of drivers who are qualified to transport oxygen and restrictions around how long truck drivers can be on the road. And, although oxygen is in the air, getting it to a Covid 19 patient struggling to breath can be trickier than it seems. Oxygen is stored and transported as a supercooled liquid—at temperatures below minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit—because it is safer and takes up dramatically less space that way. But it must be converted into a gas to help patients breathe. That happens in the aluminum coils, which form a device known as an ambient air vaporizer. Problems arise when moisture in the air condenses on the surface of the coils and freezes, lowering the temperature of the oxygen gas inside, and disrupting the regulators that control the flow of oxygen to patients. When a hospital needs to run its vaporizers at full tilt to feed an unprecedented number of ventilators, the vaporizers don’t get a chance to defrost. The solution is to ask the fire department to defrost the vaporizers by blasting them with water and that recently happened in nearby Sampson County. And, to think, all this could be avoided by getting the vaccine.
To be sure, most people who contract COVID-19 don’t die from it. However, those who are dying from it never thought they would end their lives unconscious and tethered to a ventilator, either. Get the vaccine. If not for yourself, do it for your children so they don’t have to grow up without you. Do it for your loved ones so they don’t have to make the difficult decision to remove you from life support. Do it for the healthcare professionals who are simply emotionally and physically exhausted from treating patients scared to death who know the chances of them walking out of the ICU is slim to none and slim just left the building. Do it for the overworked and undercompensated supply chain workers. Damn it. Just do it!
To learn more about how the Crystal Coast is responding to COVID 19 as well as buying real estate in Emerald Isle, go to www.EmeraldIsleHomesforSaleNC.com and sign up for my blog. Ready to buy or sell? Call me at 919-308-2292. Explore the video tab for my weekly uploads to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and receive free donuts at my Flip Flops Donut shop. Text your email address to 919-308-2292 and subscribe to my newsletter. My book, "Live Where You Vacation" is available on Amazon.com.
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