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It is as if someone squeezes your neck and you cannot get rid of this grip. This is the feeling that COVID patients have when they arrive in intensive care, even described by an ATI doctor. “It is the time when these people ask you to do anything to help them not feel the acute shortage of air,” Dr. Radu Țincu told Digi24. He also said that these patients are still very traumatized, many of them become extremely anxious and panicky. The images – with strong emotional impact – that Digi24 captured in an intensive care unit in Iași confirm this stark reality from the border where doctors struggle to wrest their patients from that cold and ruthless grip.
“Close the bed!”
“Ball!”
“Have another adrenaline rush, please.”
Begin resuscitation by pressing rhythmically on the patient’s chest with both palms.
“Stop for a moment!”
“We continue!”
Any life matters
We are in the intensive care unit of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases “Saint Parascheva” in Iasi. A medical team should have been waiting for us in the red zone, but no one is there. We take a few steps and understand why. One patient’s health deteriorated and doctors began resuscitation. Together with the nurses and nurses, they fight to save his life.
“It just came to our attention then. And he has another one, under his tongue!”
A nurse runs, tube in hand: “Look!”
“What’s in here?”
“Clots upon clots! God forgive me!”
The dramatic moment that I caught in the intensive care unit speaks to the enormous effort of the doctors during this period. Sometimes resuscitating a patient takes an hour. It is a difficult procedure that requires intense physical effort. Around the patients who need such maneuvers there are doctors, nurses. Doctors and nurses are resurrected one by one because they are tired.
“It is a constant fight to save a life. Any life matters. We must mobilize immediately after any battle lost or won, to start another one,” says Viorica Pavel, intensive care assistant.
Fight for a breath of fresh air
The same fight is happening in other hospitals. Iasi is one of the foci of Romania. The “Nicolae Oblu” Hospital has 20 ATI beds for COVID. They are all busy. Some patients are intubated, others are in better condition. There are also young patients fighting for their lives. They struggle to breathe, even if oxygen is coming through the mask on their face.
The patient in the images is in his early 30s. He tells the doctors he can’t.
“Take a deep breath, focus on breathing. Again, easy. Try to calm down, gently, to breathe, but to calm down. So calm down. Do you hear me? Take a breath, calm, calm …” – are the instructions that receives from the man in the white suit, who approached her bed.
The patient tries to tell the doctors that he can no longer breathe, but the effort to speak makes him even worse.
“Listen to me, when I put the device on, don’t talk. Now it’s not important to talk, it’s important to breathe. Stop talking, don’t explain anything!”
“Calm down a bit,” says a second doctor who approached the patient’s bed.
“You don’t have to explain anything, just focus on breathing! So! When I put the device on. And then we talk whatever you want, but now keep calm. So!”
“The patient is perfectly conscious, he talks to him, but the respiratory aggravation and the fact that he is polypneic, dyspnoic and can always stop breathing – this is a peculiarity that I have not encountered. When you try to give the patient water, to feed him, the saturation decreases so dramatically! For me, it is something unusual ”, confesses Dr. Sebastrian Popescu, anesthesiologist and specialist in intensive care.
A contagious fear
Another unusual thing for intensive care professionals is the way they intervene in cases that get worse. Before the pandemic, there were people connected to the devices, sedated, but now there are also conscious patients, who are scared when another patient begins to feel bad. Doctors have learned to intervene quietly, placing screens around the critically ill patient to protect others from the shaking shaking.
“We try, as far as possible, not to make these situations visible, but I listen, I see,” says nurse Viorica Pavel. “Most people are just afraid of the idea of having reached intensive care. It is already a moment of panic,” he says.
Half of the intensive care beds remain empty because patients lose the battle. When a patient dies, doctors go to other patients and explain what happened, try to reassure them and give them courage.
“What are you doing? Is it okay?” Asks a nurse, putting her hand on her cheek. Even with the glove that prevents direct contact, the gesture is good.
“I say it’s okay,” responds the patient.
“Perfect! It will be good,” encourages the nurse.
Patients want to get out of bed and help those in need
There were cases in which patients who were in better condition wanted to help those who were suffering.
“Generally, after an episode like this we go with them, we talk to them, we explain them, they ask us, we try to encourage them, we try to explain to them that in the end, if we couldn’t help them, neither could they. they couldn’t do it. We had patients who used to get out of bed to go help others, but it doesn’t help them or those with problems and then that’s what you tell them: to stay as calm as possible, “he explains. Viorica Pavel, ATI assistant.
But how do doctors manage?
“At that moment, we are no longer overwhelmed by emotion, at that moment we must be professional and act quickly, in the interest of the patient, so that the possibilities of resuscitation of the patient are maximum”, says Dr. Sorin Rosu, coordinator of the ATI department of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases “Saint Parascheva”.
“I said it was a cold”
Doctors’ work is also hampered by the fact that many patients stay home for a week, even if they have symptoms, in the hope that it is a simple cold that will pass. But their condition worsens and they go straight to intensive care.
– I had a worse condition at home, says an ATI patient.
“How long have you been home?”
– I stayed longer, a week or so.
– Has your condition worsened at home?
– Yes Yes.
“Why did you stay home so long?”
– I said it was a cold, I took the pills.
– Can you breathe without a mask?
– Yes of course. I can breathe without a mask, says the man, and to prove it, he takes it off.
In a few moments the voice of the nurse is heard:
– Put the mask back on, the saturation will decrease! Put on the mask! he said and came to help the patient put it back in.
“We are under siege and people keep joking about what is happening”
“The COVID-19 disease is different from the flu. If at first we thought that it was a pathology with the main respiratory involvement, later we discovered that it is not. It is a pathology that causes multisystemic damage, that causes neurological damage, causes ischemic, heart, liver and kidney problems, practically the whole body is affected. Patients who end up intubated have extremely extensive damage to the lung parenchyma, they can no longer breathe. Although many of them are negative – your body in some way manages to get rid of the virus – the traces left by this fight are extraordinary, “says Valentin Hârtie, ATI doctor at the” Nicolae Oblu “Hospital.
“We are still under siege and people are still joking about everything that is happening. It’s frustrating, because we know that all the places in the hospital are busy and you have to ask yourself why they don’t want to protect themselves, ”confesses Viorica Pavel, ATI assistant.
“We have to take into account all the scenarios, we saw what happened in Italy, in Spain, we should not have the impression that Romania could not enter a scene in that way, we have so many fears,” admits Sorin Roșu. ATI section coordinator.
