A Report From the Coronavirus Frontline: "They Are Essentially Drowning in Their Own Blood."

[babylonsister]

March 21, 2020
A Report From the Coronavirus Frontline: “They Are Essentially Drowning in Their Own Blood.”
“Holy shit, I do not want to catch this and I don’t want anyone I know to catch this.”
Lizzie Presser

snip//

“With our coronavirus patients, once they’re on ventilators, most need about the highest settings that we can do. About 90% oxygen, and 16 of PEEP, positive end-expiratory pressure, which keeps the lung inflated. This is nearly as high as I’ve ever seen. The level we’re at means we are running out of options.

“In my experience, this severity of ARDS is usually more typical of someone who has a near drowning experience—they have a bunch of dirty water in their lungs—or people who inhale caustic gas. Especially for it to have such an acute onset like that. I’ve never seen a microorganism or an infectious process cause such acute damage to the lungs so rapidly. That was what really shocked me.”

“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is not the flu.’ Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.

“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full. So we’re constantly having to suction out the secretions every time we go into their rooms.”

“Before this, we were all joking. It’s grim humor. If you are exposed to the virus and test positive and go on quarantine, you get paid. We were all joking: I want to get the coronavirus because then I get a paid vacation from work. And once I saw these patients with it, I was like, ‘Holy shit, I do not want to catch this and I don’t want anyone I know to catch this.’

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/lung-fluids-coronavirus/

[StarryNite]

1. OMG

[Indykatie]

2. This is Some Kind of Scary n/t

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Great post.

Hope everyone reads this.

[icymist]

4. Why are the stories I read about inside hospitals always afraid of retaliation?

...I spoke to a respiratory therapist there, whose job is to ensure that patients are breathing well. He works in a medium-sized city hospital’s intensive care unit. (We are withholding his name and employer, as he fears retaliation.)

I don't understand, who is going to retaliate against the truth getting out? Am I missing something here?

[babylonsister]

5. Maybe hospital personnel

have been told not to alarm the public any more than we already are.

[stillcool]

6. the 'base' will retaliate..

for anything that makes their idol appear to be fallible.