Requiem for Dr. Ortiz

Dr. Carol Ortiz (42 years old) was not surprised by the severe pain in her legs. As a child, she had problems with her hips and used to suffer discomfort when she walked a lot. The day before – Monday, November 16 – he had worked a long shift at the Fusat de Rancagua Clinical Hospital, where he worked on his feet for most of the day. The strange thing was that he had taken several painkillers and none of them were working. So she called her friend and colleague Francisca Perales, asking her to come to her apartment in Providencia to give her an intravenous injection.

They both stayed on eleven after the treatment. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“If the pain continues, call me,” said Perales.

On Wednesday morning, Ortiz woke up with pain all over his body. She called her friend on the phone and told her what was happening. They began to seriously think that they could be symptoms of Covid-19. They had no idea where it could have been infected. He was taking days off from work at Florida Hospital, but had not had any close contact in that time.

-No, I do not think so. We have been in this for eight months, how now am I going to catch it? -she said.

-Tell me if you have a fever, if your head hurts. Let me know and he took you to the clinic, ”her friend replied.

During the afternoon the problems worsened. He had a 38 degree fever and trouble breathing. So they decided to go to the Emergency Room of the German Clinic. They arrived at 6 pm. Carol had a scan and blood samples. He realized immediately that the contagion was more serious than he had imagined. This is how he made it known to Francisca Perales.

-I can’t believe he gave me this shit. After eight months of struggling with this shit, ”Ortiz said while crying.

The two friends said goodbye with a hug at midnight.

Friends and family coincide: Dr. Carol Ortiz’s story is marked by goals accomplished step by step. She was the first college student in her family. He entered Medicine at the Catholic University and paid for his degree working at the same time. He was also a pillar for his two younger siblings, whom he cared for attentively.

That way of being he also showed in his work. “She did things because they were born to her, to help the other. That was something that he manifested in his personal life and in his work ”, comments Pablo Tapia, technical chief of the Critical Patients Unit (UPC) at Hospital de La Florida.

When Carol started working as a doctor at the CRS in Maipú, she bought her parents a house in Maipú and helped her siblings financially. He fulfilled the dream of traveling to Europe and Thailand.

“She was a very matte professional, she had a lot of knowledge. On the other hand, in practical terms, in reaching out to patients, she was super neat. From a practical and academic point of view he was very efficient. Any questions I had, I asked her. We called her the mother, she was the mother of the unit, ”says Sebastián del Solar, the doctor’s colleague.

Carol worked at the CRS in Maipú, at the Las Lilas Clinic and at the Carabineros Hospital. Currently, she worked shifts at the Fusat de Rancagua and at the Dra. Eloísa Díaz I. Clinical Hospital in La Florida, where she was technical chief of the UPC. He always expressed the desire to work in emergencies. I wanted to save lives.

“If you had to stay five hours extra from your workday, you did it without being paid a peso,” says Pablo Tapia.

As a doctor, she stood out for her accurate diagnoses and for establishing links with her patients. He made arrangements to get medicine when it was not his due and he cried with the relatives of those who were ill. Gestures that were not part of their work and that were not common in other doctors, as Daniel Morales, head of the UPC Adults at the Florida Hospital, recalls: “Once an immigrant woman arrived with a very poor prognosis due to cancer. I was alone in Chile. She suggested that we work especially to give her a little more time, so that her family in Colombia could come and say goodbye. He convinced us all of that. “

The woman survived for a month longer than predicted. Although she was unable to reunite with her loved ones, Dr. Ortiz’s fight for that patient remained in the memory of the rest of the UPC doctors.

In normal times, in the UPC of the Florida Hospital there were 11 beds for the most serious patients. The peak of coronavirus infections forced an increase to 58 units. The team destined for that place was faced with an unknown situation. Day by day patients arrived with whom they had to work to save their lives.

Carol Ortiz stopped seeing her family and her dog, whom she left with her parents in March. He visited them without entering the house to leave them merchandise. He took all precautions not to infect his loved ones.

“She was wrong. She talked to me every time she left a shift, I accompanied her as she went home. At first yes, I was very affected. With this disease there is not much to do, ”says his sister Paola.

“I remember finishing a long day at work and out of nowhere looking at us (with Carol) and making us cry. Having told us that, deep down, we had never experienced a situation in which, despite giving 200% of your effort, there were so many people who still died. That gave you a feeling of frustration, ”says Francisca Perales, technical chief at the UPC.

For the UPC team, the situation was so complex that they asked the psychiatrists at the hospital for support. They did group therapy to find emotional tools to deal with the pandemic.

When one of the infected improved, it was a triumph, a joy in the midst of darkness.

“We cry together. It is an atrocious, impressive question, the story of each patient, the family. We had relatives of officials who died, giving bad news, it was very hard, ”recalls Sebastián del Solar, technical chief of the UPC.

Dr. Ortiz was one of the most affected. They could see it in his face, in his mood. He worked a lot of overtime, because the work was never done. There was a kind of pact between the whole team: when the pandemic passed, she would be the first to take a vacation. Carol said she was exhausted.

Dr. Daniel Morales was on duty at the German Clinic on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 18. He was the one who treated Carol, his colleague at the Florida Hospital, when he arrived with obvious symptoms of Covid-19. He took the exam, saw his scanner, and they talked.

“I gave her peace of mind, darling, that I was going to get her through. We had taken extremely serious patients. What it was telling him was that he could get ahead too. I was young and had no chronic diseases ”, he says.

From his experience, Ortiz was clear that his exams were complex. Dr. Morales knew it too. The disease had advanced a lot. That day, before being intubated, she spoke with her coworkers to find calm.

“He told me that I was super scared, we expressed the affection of friends, I thanked him for everything he had taught me, what he had given for me and I told him that I knew it would be okay. That was my last conversation, ”says Sebastián del Solar.

The doctor died on Friday the 20th, at 7:30 p.m. It was from an intercranial hemorrhage. According to his death certificate, he suffered from pneumonia with Covid.

The news caused a stir in those who knew her. At the Hospital de La Florida they organized various tributes, with ambulances lined up lighting their lights, candles on the front, masses, posters and illustrations to remember the doctor. Also, starting this week, the Fusat Rancagua critical patients unit will bear her name: Dr. Carol Ortiz Gutiérrez.

The latest epidemiological report on the pandemic among health personnel is from September 25. The numbers indicated that there were 3,750 professionals infected and 72 deceased. On the other hand, the Colmed handles the figure of 19 deceased doctors until today.

“She is a young, healthy woman. He let his guard down and contracted the disease outside the hospital. I believe that this message of youth, energy, vitality, knowledge, does not make us immune to this disease, ”said the Undersecretary of Healthcare Networks, Alberto Dougnac.

His statements, which were originally intended to express condolences, caused outrage in several of the people who knew Dr. Ortiz.

“I come back from burying my sister, I turn on the television and I watch this. One does not expect much from the authorities of the country, but still. It was horrible. And not only for us, a lack of respect and indolence for the union ”, says Paola Ortiz.

“She worked six or eight months and you are telling her that she did not know how to do her job. That’s what he did, it was what he did every day. He went out of his way to save people’s lives every month. And are you telling me this? I found him idiotic, ridiculous, ”says Francisca Perales, who is in quarantine and without symptoms after having accompanied her infected friend.

Those who were with Carol rule out that he could have “lowered his guard.” They are emphatic in pointing out that he was taking the same care as in the worst moments of the pandemic. He was always alert; aware of the severity of the disease and that it could make his own family sick.

“If I could say something, it is that I thank everyone, I have received so much support, so much love and so much concern. And they are not going to tarnish it, ”says Paola Ortiz.

In the Florida Hospital they still keep some documents that belonged to Carol Ortiz. Among them, three notebooks in which he wrote down every detail of his patients. It is not yet clear if the family will keep them or if they will remain in that place, as a kind of reminder about those days when the doctor and her team faced the worst of the coronavirus.