As Dr. Shane Wilson visits a small 25-bed hospital in rural Missouri, many of his movements are familiar in the age of the coronavirus.
Masks and gloves. Zippered plastic walls between the hall loaves. Hand sanitizer when he enters and exits every room.
But one thing is quite different. Born and raised in a city of just 1,800, Wilson knows most of his patients by their first names.
He visits a woman who would have been a gym teacher at his school, and later he smiles and remembers a day when he caught her smoking at school and made cigarette butts for her and a friend as punishment.
Another man was in the middle of his soybean harvest when he fell ill and could not finish.
In November, Wilson was treating his own father, who worked at the same hospital with his wife. Wilson, 74, recovered from the virus.
The coronavirus epidemic first hit urban areas in large numbers, but the autumn surge is also devastating in rural America.
U.S. More than 1,170,000 new cases are occurring every day in India, with hospital admissions breaking records frequently, and it is spreading from large hospitals such as County Hospitals in Scotland to small ones.
The tragedy here is smaller, more intimate. Everyone knows everyone.
Memphis, Missouri, is the largest city of miles and miles between the cornfields in the north-east corner of this midwestern state.
Agriculture accounts for most of the jobs in the sector. The area is so far away that the nearest stoplights, McDonald’s and Wart Lamart are an hour away, said Alyssa Keeger, the hospital’s director of public relations.
People come to the hospital from the surrounding six counties, especially to treat farm and sports injuries, chest pains and things like the flu. In general, there is plenty of space.
Not now. A small hospital with 75 nurses, including about six doctors and 142 full-time staff, is in crisis. The Covid-19 case is seeing a big increase in this area, and all available beds are usually taken.
Doctors at Scotland County Hospital already make difficult, often heartbreaking decisions about who they can take.
Willson said some moderately ill people have been sent home with oxygen and was told, “If things go bad, come back, but we don’t have a place to put you and we don’t have a place to relocate you.”
Meanwhile, the staff shortage is so severe that the hospital appealed to anyone with health experience, including retirees, to come to work.
Some have responded and it is already on the staff, including a woman working as a mutual nurse while she is studying to become a registered nurse.
The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Elizabeth Goofy, said nurses work up to 24 extra hours each week. Gaffy sometimes sleeps in office fees instead of going home between shifts.
“We’re capable of increasing almost 100% of the time,” Guffe said. “So it’s all hands on deck.”
It is especially difficult for friends and relatives to struggle with the disease when a large section of the community still does not take it seriously, he said.
“We spend our time indoors taking care of these very sick people, and then we go out of town and people tell us that the disease is a fraud or that it doesn’t really exist,” Guffe said.
Glenn Cowell wasn’t so sure about the virus until he knocked it to his knees.
At age 68, Cowell still works on his 500-acre farm near Memphis and is so healthy that he doesn’t take pills daily.
He began to feel weak around 11 November, tested positive four days later, then gradually became ill.
On November 18, an ambulance rushed him to the room. He was treated and went home.
“They only had one bed left and I didn’t think I was the only one who could take someone else’s bed,” Cowell said.
But soon, breathing became difficult and nausea began. Worst of all, its temperature rose to 104 F.
After a long hospital stay, another ambulance came.
He is not sure where he got the virus but admits he was not overly cautious.
Cowell said he is a firmly independent person and was equally concerned about the epidemic and protocol for preventing the spread. Sometimes it depends on nothing more than whether you sign up for a particular store seeking to cover customers’ faces before making a purchase.
“I was very vague about it. If the Daler General said I wanted to wear a mask, I would wear a mask. If I walk from the street to the farm and home, I don’t wear a mask. “I wasn’t really aware of the fact that he could support you and not let you go,” he said.
Brock Slabech, senior vice president of the National Rural Health Association, based in suburban Kansas City, said running a rural hospital takes “space, staff and materials.”
“If you don’t have one of those three, you’re really a hamstring,” he said, adding that many hospitals face shortages in all three areas.
Wilson spent hours on the phone one day, trying to find a serious hospital capable of providing such serious care that could save a man in his 50s who was seriously ill from the virus.
By the time the University of Iowa agreed to take him to the hospital, it was clear he would not survive the 120-mile trip.
“I don’t know if taking him to Iowa City would have made a difference,” Wills said. “Sometimes people are so sick that they can’t survive, and that’s the reality we have to face.”
He added: “But it’s frustrating when you sit here with your hands clasped.”
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