A Florida hospital has developed a four-part protocol for treating Covid with over 96% success rates. They say no one needed to be put in a ventilator and everyone survived?!?! Data is in short supply but they plan on doing a clinical trial…
The treatment protocol includes many things we’ve given over the past 6 months, including zinc, dexamethasone, and azithromycin. Click through to read to specific/acronymed details:
My sister & I live together (both of us now post-divorce) and we frequent do arts ‘n crafts while we watch tv or movies. Tonight we’ve been up to our usual shenanigans after sticking up on snacks (and plants, our other hobby) at Trader Joe’s. My sister did a quick art piece in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s incredible life. I’m going to post it here because I love it… but she doesn’t know I have this blog so please don’t tell her. Lol?
This is the tail end of Suicide Prevention Week, and while I have a lot to say about the healthcare providers role in assessing risk and intervening, I don’t want to not say anything because I can’t get my act together to say everything I want… classic perfectionist bullshit, right?
Last week, when I got home from work on the day the sky was orange, my sister (who I live with) met me at the door with a half-joking/half-not “so, this is gonna increase suicides, huh?” She walked away to the office to work from home.
I joked that I had been thinking the same thing on the way home. But my joke had a dark side. My thoughts had an edge of real questioning— why should I keep going through all this pain and heartache dragging my ass to work in one of the busiest ICUs in the area to care for the sickest of the sick. Why do I keep doing any of this? But the truth is that I’ve survived much worse things than this and found my way out of darker places. Maybe someday I’ll tell y’all about it.
Covid19 and the isolation it causes, as well as our new wildfires on the West Coast that prevent us from even going outside—many people find themselves in crisis. Even my therapist had to take an abrupt vacation to the East Coast.
It is times like this when people’s ability to cope becomes overwhelmed & when hopelessness can set in. Suicide Prevention Week comes at the perfect time to remind us to check on our friends and loved ones.
The following Instagram post is from my therapy “company.” I find it to be thoughtful and helpful right now. If you click through the pictures, I especially like the common misconception explanations about suicide. Spend a few minutes here if you have time.
It’s Sunday morning. The AQI (air quality index) is over 200 which is pretty much unhealthy for everyone. I think even the spiders at my house are dead. I’m sitting on my front porch anyways because, honestly—it seems like everything is out to get me right now.
Now, we’ve settled into an impenetrable whiteness, ash just aloft in the air waiting to settle. Fine particles of some else’s disaster making their way into our lungs. Luckily (?!?!), covid has prepared us all to wear masks. They are even more necessary now.
As I sit here, the quietness of the neighborhood is overwhelming. But then I hear it… the neighbors one street south. They’ve been playing music (on actual instruments) and singing throughout quarantine. I hear a low flute drift toward me, a haunting yet familiar melody. I hear a man’s voice maybe, but I can’t understand any words.
The neighbor’s music often includes a child playing the blocks, just banging away, but not this morning. It is on and off. Little snippets of song interrupt my thoughts as I wonder what could possibly go wrong this week to add to California’s problems. If Oregon will stop burning; if any of our beloved West Coast is really habitable at all.
Then it dawns on me as I begin to hum along. The song. It is “The Sound of Silence.”
Last week, everyone was still happy for the overtime and could see the $$$ in the missed meal breaks. Everyone was chipping in, picking up extra and actually in buoyant spirits (if that can ever be said about ICU nurses).
I actually texted this image stolen from Pinterest to a colleague in my happy and helpful bliss last week… perhaps it was delirium?
For my first few shifts this week, though, the nurses were just not feeling like doing as much OT. I can’t blame them. Our patients are incredibly sick. Our job is incredibly hard both physically and emotionally. There just isn’t as much support available as there should be even if people volunteer to work OT because nurses on overtime just aren’t working their best.
Also, it makes me sad to say, but the patients aren’t getting the best then either. As nurses we want to be THE BEST we can be for our patients, especially in the ICU, but when you’re working hours 12 through 16.5, you can’t always give your best. It’s sorta like the Rolling Stones’ song, loosely “translated” to this scenario: you can’t always give what you want, but you give at least what patients need.
On a happier note, though, I ended my week with a fully staffed night shift that gave report to a fully staffed day shift! First time in 3 weeks.
A family of a terminally ill covid19 patient (who now has multi-organ failure on dialysis as well as bacterial lung infections on top of the damage done by the severe ARDS caused by the covid19 virus) asked that we call a doctor in Texas to discuss treatments with alien dna that could help. They were referring to “Trump’s doctor” Stella Immanuel who also swore by hydroxychloroquine, which is now disproven as a treatment for covid. One question: where do we get the alien dna?
Another family of a terminally ill patient (who also has multi-organ failure on dialysis plus more than 15 surgeries that started as a complex hernia repair at another facility) asked that we try a high dose cayenne pepper derivative to cleanse their loved ones blood and raise his blood pressure. I assured them that the medications he was on were much stronger than cayenne.