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“In five seconds, after you take off the oxygen, you start screaming,” says Dr. Nebojsa Krstic, one of many patients at the CBC “Dragisa Misovic”, where the fight against the crown has not stopped since March and where doctors, nurses and everyone else these walls fight a tough battle for every life and breath
Being sick with kovid is like being a fish on dry land and fighting for air. By the time it leaves the oxygen, it only takes five to ten seconds to begin chirping. And then panic … Fear is a normal human trait. Panic is a problem. If you get over panic, you’ve gotten over it all.
So the story begins Dr. Nebojsa Krstic (58) from Vranje, an employee at the Bujanovac emergency room health center, who was admitted to the Belgrade KBC “Dragiša Mišović” on October 22 with bilateral pneumonia. This institution has been caring for kovid patients since March, and reporters from Kurir also visited last week. All employees, like soldiers on the battlefield, are fighting the battle constantly and tirelessly. The goal is one: life!
– I have my first symptoms at work, on call. Fever with bone pain, and then everything in order … I was tested. Positive. Two days in the hospital in Vranje, so I was transferred to “Mišović” for intensive care – says Dr. Krstić. He feared more for his wife, who is also infected, than for himself. Fortunately, it passed without pain:
Photo: Tanjug AP / Matthias Schrader
– I ended up in intensive care. With oxygen for 24 hours. From 15 to 17 liters … I don’t even want to think about the endless hours in the hospital …
Fortunately, he won the key battle and was preparing to go home to see his grandchildren, whom he missed the most.
Many “Mišović” patients still have to fight. Block B, where there are around 80 beds and 22 beds for the most difficult patients, is full. In intensive care, a ghostly silence. The hiss of respirators and the quiet speech of the hurried sisters. Some patients undergo invasive intubation, put to sleep to relieve pain. However, their faces, serious and expressionless, suggest a struggle. As well as the eyes of patients who are on non-invasive mechanical ventilation. With a vacuum mask over the face. Aware. However, fear can also be seen in them.
Photo: Tanjug / Ministry of Defense
– Places! Sister! Urgent! – shouts one of the doctors as he and his companions run and push the bed with the patient. A middle-aged man, drenched in sweat, open-mouthed, semi-conscious, but with a distinct expression of panic on his face, is trying to catch his breath. The absolute silence was replaced by the murmur of voices and hasty movements. In less than a minute, the patient was hooked up to oxygen.
This happens often, explains Natasa Bogunovic, head nurse at KBC “Dragisa Misovic”. Patients “aggravated” go to the intensive care unit.
– They put a mask on him and now put him in the prone position (lying face down). They are doing everything possible to postpone putting on a respirator, explains Bogunović.
New patients are constantly arriving, says Dr. Tatjana Milošević, head of the pulmonology department, and it is especially worrying that in the first and second waves, at least initially, they were much younger patients, between 20 and 40 years old. Now a large number of them are over 65 years old.
Photo: Google Maps
– The number of infected grows alarmingly. We do not know how many of them will have a severe clinical picture. We already have several pathologies and many difficult patients. We have those who have developed kidney failure, patients who are dialyzed normally, many diabetics and patients with other chronic diseases … In the first days of the disease, most patients are not in such a serious condition , but the worsening begins between the seventh and the tenth day. The older the patient, the more comorbidities, the more severe the clinical picture is expected – says Dr. Milošević. Note that the respiratory infection season normally lasts until May and that there are many bacterial pneumonias in that period. What will happen in the collision with the corona and when there will be a new peak, Dr. Milosevic says is largely up to us:
– If people were a little more careful – to wear masks and wash their hands, everything would be different and it would be much easier for all of us.
His confident voice dominates the sound of the respirator, and as health workers in spacesuits rush from patient to patient, we wonder, “Is it that easy and why is it so difficult?”
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