Protocols

[mallorys_camera]

Tentative opening of Chapter 4, Work in Progress:

Wiltwyck Hospital was a small community hospital. We didn't have a lot of sophisticated resources. We didn't have________. We didn't have________. We didn't have________. We didn't have ________. There wasn't much we could do for COVID patients, but the COVID patients kept coming in anyway.

Problemo is not having been an RN during COVID, I don't have the slightest idea what resources might or might not have been available to a small community hospital.

I've been calling all my nurse friends and putting the question to them. Except they don't have the slightest idea either, since all of them had managed to get out of hospital nursing by the time COVID hit.

Yesterday, I chattered with Barbara Angell for an hour and a half.

And it was a great conversation, except that it did not yield me the info I was after.

Barbara did remind me that during COVID, all hospitals looked like lawn parties in the Hamptons since they were surrounded by these enormous white open-air tents where people were tested for COVID and had their vitals done so that once they were admitted, they could be shunted off to the COVID only wards.

And also that once they were admitted, COVID patients were forced to rest prone on beds, face down, because some CDC sartrap had ascertained that, however uncomfortable and unrestful this position might be, it provided the best aeration for damaged lungs.

So, I guess I will work with that.

###

Meanwhile, it is a balmy 7° here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley. So cold, the chickens' water has been freezing over, so mornings start with me literally hammering through the ice scrim on the poultry fountain.

When the thermometer hits double digits, I will toddle off for my annual haircut. I am lucky, I have great hair. It always looks good until it hits that length where it begins to get weedy. It hit that length about a week ago.

I have the beginnings of a cold, which I'm trying to ignore. And now that I've restarted the gummie protocol, I am a bit braindead.

But better braindead than sleepless.

Plus the great thing about "braindead" is that you don't have enough battery charge to actually care that you're braindead!

Comments

[rebeccmeister]

Something something ECMO??

[rebeccmeister]

Reserve oxygen tanks.

Positive pressure rooms.

[asakiyume]

I remember the reserve oxygen tanks shortage--people in India desperate to get their hands on them.

[mallorys_camera]

I ended up using all your suggestions. Thanks! 😀

[rebeccmeister]

I'm glad my slightly-too-vivid memories were helpful!

You also definitely have to include things about running out of gloves and face masks. I would not expect a small hospital to have much of a reserve, and I would also expect they would have a harder time getting more after running out. So there would have to be weird and extreme measures taken to try and disinfect things (failing autoclave? etc).

[mallorys_camera]

Ohhhh!!! Failing autoclave—in fact, autoclave at all—is very good! 😀 Thank you!

[lookfar2]

Well, I'm leaning on Lexapro and Trazodone these days to keep it together and I do really care if my brain is even slightly dead. Evidence suggests that the first thing to go is the "Finish the Sentence" function, but it might also be from stress.

I'll bet you could find some good hospital motifs by looking in the back files of the WaPo and the NYT; even though they would reflect big city hospitals, you could certainly then google "what happens to Covid patient if respirator is not available?"

[mallorys_camera]

No, newspaper stories don't have the kinds of status details I'm interested in. And while there are certainly lots of books about hospitals during COVID, the majority of them were written by doctors, and the doctor experience is very different from the nurse experience.

You are wayyyyy more fastidious about the state of your brain than I am about mine. And that's a good thing! 😀 Honestly, I should care more.

[asakiyume]

Hmmm, I don't have any close connections who are RNs either, but the daughter of one of my book group friends was an RN during covid. An artist did a great picture of her looking absolutely exhausted, with bruises on her face from wearing the N95 mask. The overwork of the nurses, and health professionals traveling to, e.g., New York to help out was something I remember--but of course people weren't traveling to small regional hospitals so much. But people were coming out of retirement to help, I remember. ... Doesn't answer your question about what those hospitals lacked, though...

[mallorys_camera]

Bruises from the N95 is a good detail! 😀