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The day is beautiful, people love the streets of Krusevac. Hurry up, life doesn’t stop. If it weren’t for the masks on some faces, it wouldn’t be said that we are in the middle of a plague. And just minutes from downtown, life and death in the same room, fear and hope, disease and struggle, is a new kovid hospital.
Beep monitor
In the area of the old “Rasina” barracks, a new white building. The ground floor is full of everything and everything: alcohol, infusions, gauze, bottles, needles, boxes … nothing should be missing. Let’s go up. Under the full “war team”, we run to the intensive. Our leader is Gordana Dragošev, the head nurse of the hospital. He jokes nicely, but there are no jokes with work. Everything should be under the thread, not even a hair should stick out from under the hat.
Under normal circumstances, she is the head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Clinic at the Nis Clinical Center. But now you have a special task. Like many KC Nis doctors, nurses, and technicians who built this hospital and this system. How it seems to us: perfectly.
From the beginning of the corridor there is an intense beeping of monitors, the hum of machines that signify life. And below, at the bottom, a white bag on the bed. The crown took another life. His right arm, bent at the elbow, pushed the bag away. A bag under the bed: the last thing the man left.
– The corpse is considered infectious for six hours. And that’s why, when the patient dies, we put an alcohol-soaked gauze on his face and we have to keep the body here for six hours, an anesthesiologist tells us.
We are among the most difficult of the most difficult. The hiss is loud. The monitors are flashing: saturation, pressure, crooked lines … Only one is on standby and, look at the paradox, the one above, next to the same bed, shows the exact time. Minutes and hours pass. And under the white sheet covered the body. At the foot of the bed are the toes of his right foot. Yellow and long nails. Yellow somehow and skin.
– God, does it change color immediately? Was skin like this an hour ago, when the 86-year-old was still alive? My thought passes.
The wait is two hours, according to the usual procedure for each death. And then follow the cat and the hallway. Until those six hours. Two bags full of things under the bed.
– Extinguishing all lives is difficult for everyone. We spent the last days and hours with these people. And everyone has someone who is suffering now. But in order not to think, continue immediately. Other patients should not wait, you have to give up. And for her own good and for her own good, says Sister Gordana.
I look at the room. Is anyone aware of seeing that? In the corner, a man struggles to breathe under a mask. He amused himself with his misery, he probably never even saw death. Woman next door, wearing respirator. She does not know anything. The anesthetist takes your blood and places the syringe in the device – a gas analyzer.
– We take arterial blood because it carries oxygen to vital organs and the device now measures the concentration of oxygen in the blood, that is, the partial pressure of oxygen. Unfortunately, there are 49 here, and it should be at least 90. You can see that the patient is in a very bad apartment – explains Nikola Trajković.
The third bed of the death bed is: victory! And proof that not all battles are lost, not even the one that looks like this.
Potatoes and chicken
– We take the patient off the ventilator after one week. He is 62 years old, with a crown and Parkinson’s disease. And we succeeded, he will be home soon, the anesthesiologist on duty tells us.
And he, still dazed, whispers “Dragan”, trying to tell us something else, but there is no voice. Strong cables and pipes are still attached to it. But he does not care. Only one thing is important: he survived.
It’s lunch time. In the second room a more cheerful atmosphere.
– Potatoes, chicken, cabbage – where is better to go – a patient laughs, while Zivadin Arsenijevic (73), in our words, will look great:
– Please don’t curse me! They took me out. Thank heaven. At the bottom, the blood “spins” through a long, crooked intestine – dialysis.
– Our patients are often on dialysis – says Bojana Kostić, a nurse we met last summer in the KC Niš red light district. The fighting in Krusevac continued. – Intensive work is the most beautiful in the world – he says, and you can’t believe what you hear after all these scenes.
There is also a smiling lady.
– Please don’t take a picture of me. I don’t remember when I washed my hair. Still, I would have to prepare for the newspaper – he straightens his hair and says: – I am also diabetic, and I have pressure and what not. And here I am alive. Yesterday they took off my oxygen. I can sing now.
Down in the corner, they change a patient’s diaper, put grandmother on her back, put the infusion there, put a new syringe in the device … it works. There is also his fellow citizen Milica, and she is practically a child. First job, of course. But it doesn’t stop.
The hardest thing when you leave young
Move on. It is easier to breathe in the semi-intensive. At least for us. But there it is not easy either. Masks everywhere. We pass through a room full of “parked” respirators: there is progress, there is no need for evil.
Downstairs is the admissions clinic. Gordan jumps with his “children” – one, two, three – and places the patient on the bed of the wheelchair. In addition to the blanket, bone and leather. Hold the mask to your face. A shoe fell off somewhere. Velvet pants tucked into socks. After all the scenes, he is the one who makes himself cry. Will he get out of this building alive? They are importing a young man in a wheelchair into the elevator: black, crouched, not speaking, looking at the ground … We go to the office of Dr. Vladan Cvetanović, director of this hospital, anesthesiologist at KC Niš. He went through everything with the crown from the beginning. There is nothing that surprises him anymore. But he is also flesh and blood.
– The hardest thing is when someone dies young. When you did the best you could, you fought and he left. In those moments, you have a damn sense of helplessness. In Nis, in front of my eyes, my friend from elementary school died. He was on the respirator for twenty-something days. We did everything. But nothing – her eyes filled with tears, her voice was gone. Everything has been said …
Dr. Vladan Cvetanović
The three waves have their own characteristics
Dr. Cvetanović notes that the three waves still had some details in the clinical picture.
– In the first wave, we had many pulmonary emboli, while in the second, it was the turn of kidney failure, so we still have many dialysis patients today. We did not have the classic clinical picture, something did not fit in all that history. Now, here at Krusevac, it is clear that we have an increased risk of cardiovascular complications – strokes and heart attacks – says Dr. Cvetanovic and adds that they will put the angiosal into operation next week, so they will see patients who have a myocardial infarction due to the crown.
Prof. Dr. Zoran Perišić
The pressure on this hospital is not easing
Prof. Dr. Zoran Perišić, Director of KC Niš, points out that the pressure on the Kovid hospital in Kruševac is not easing. – We are freeing up other centers from the kovid system to return them to the nevid system. In Serbia, more people continue to die from cardiovascular diseases and we cannot turn our heads from other diseases. Nis, as a large tertiary center, must also take care of that. This pressure does not fall here because the patients come from all parts of the gravitating region – Ćuprija, Paraćin, Aleksinac … – says Dr. Perišić and adds that they currently only have one infected person among the staff and, most importantly, There is no infection within the system, but there is contact with friends and family.
Organization
Young people the greatest challenge
The biggest challenge here is working with newly hired staff because many of them came in without any experience. How will they react? Will they be afraid? And perhaps one of the biggest challenges is putting them all in one system, for which they will be useful, but also to be safe. It is a great effort for us to experience KC Nis, taking care of patients, but also providing education to young people, says Dr. Cvetanovic.
Kurir.rs/Jelena S. Spasić
delivery courier
Author: Jelena S. Spasić
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