Anguish, despair and covid heroism within Liverpool’s Intensive Care Unit

Inside the Royal Liverpool Hospital’s red covid ward, seven staff members are huddled around a bed.

Dressed in secure robes, masks and visors, the team braces for a tough time.

There is a man lying on the bed, unconscious and unable to breathe on his own. He arrived at the hospital, having contracted Covid-19, about 10 days ago and his condition has deteriorated rapidly.

He is only 49 years old and a nurse tells me that he had no health problems before being attacked by the virus; Looking at it now, it’s clear that its chances of survival are fading fast.

The team is preparing to turn the man head-on in a technique known as proning.

The idea is that by placing the patient face down, the air distribution in the lungs can potentially be improved.

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For patients like this man, who has already been on a mechanical ventilator, the supine position, lying on his back, can see the lungs compressed by gravity and other forces and can be detrimental.

I ask the nurse how long they will leave him lying on his front and he tells me that it is 16 hours at a time.

But this will actually be the fourth time they have done it with this patient; it is very clear that this is a last roll of the dice.

They invite me to come closer to see the specialized technique used by the staff, which consists of wrapping the man, who is not small in stature, tightly in his sheets and turning them to form a grip.

Then, on the count of three, they get up together and slowly turn their motionless body on their forehead; it is something difficult to observe, much less to do.

One of the nurses points out to me how the man’s face is puffy and puffy after spending so much time lying on his stomach.

I ask him what his chances of survival are. ‘It’s not good,’ she replies with a resigned expression.

She tells me that at the height of the first wave of covid-19, a whole ‘proning team’ was employed at the hospital because so many patients were arriving that they had to be turned over while they were struggling to survive; It is a long process and draining process for the staff.

Behind me is a woman lying on her bed. She seems disoriented.

My eyes are drawn to a collage of images on the wall directly above her head: photos of smiling faces and happy moments.

One of the cruelest things about this disease is that the people who are fighting for their lives are unable to do so in the company of the people they love the most.

Intensive care nurses have tried their best to invite friends and family to submit photos to display around the beds of their loved ones; They know it doesn’t compare but they have to try something

A nurse points out that one of the images on the blackboard is of the woman herself, with a smile spreading across her face and her arms hanging casually around a young relative – she looks completely different from the lady gasping for air in the room. bed next to me. .

As we move into the room next to the scenes there is nothing easier to see.

A 57-year-old man lies contorted in his bed, a fan doing all the work of breathing on his behalf.

They told me that 10 days ago I was working in a restaurant in the city, fit and active, with no health concerns; now he can no longer breathe on his own.

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There’s another grim look from the staff when I ask about their chances of survival: They’ve seen too much this year to expect anything other than the worst.

They find it hard to believe that some people believe that this virus is gone or that it is not as serious as suggested.

They tell me about the taxi driver who died with his 10-year-old son staring through the nearby door, hands pressed helplessly against the glass.

Then it was the 55-year-old lady who sat in her chair making all the doctors and nurses laugh at her stories who suddenly deteriorated and died the next day.

You cannot get used to these experiences and they have clearly had a great mental impact on the remarkable staff working in this unit under pressure.

What was vividly displayed during my time on the unit was the incredible bond that exists between these staff members, the way they trusted each other to keep their spirits up and get through the traumatic scenes that unfold in front of them on a daily basis. .

But they need our help.

Much more palpable evidence cannot be obtained that this virus is still with us than what I witnessed in Royal’s Intensive Care Unit.

Yes, Liverpool’s infection rate has dropped and the weary hospital staff are not treating as many people as they were in October, but every day people keep coming to this unit and every day people here are suffering lonely and painful deaths .

Fit people, healthy people, people who have never been seriously ill before suddenly find themselves out of air and hooked up to fans as this virus viciously tries to drain life from their body.

As I was looking at a patient, a man who was lying with a specialist helmet around his head pumping oxygen into his fragile, immobile body, one of the nurses turned to me and said: It can happen to anyone, these people did not expect this to happen to them.

“The virus is still here and we need people to do the right things.”

She is not wrong, at least we owe them that.

The second part of our UCI Royal Liverpool special report will be published on liverpoolecho.co.uk on Sunday