Month: February 2021

Categories
pandemic

More Covid News Stories

As much as I want to ignore hysterical news coverage, I still cannot tune out covid stories. Even though I try not to open the news app on my phone, I find myself jolting into full consciousness after scrolling for who-knows-how-long and wincing as I realize that I’m reading yet another covid story. By that point, I’m halfway to bookmarking it to share with y’all later or reading it aloud to my sister. Because you know the old adage– misery loves company. With that depressing introduction, here’s three stories that caught my interest so far this week…

one: covid transplant

Organ transplant patient dies when they receive (unknown) covid lungs. You have to keep doing transplants during a pandemic because people are still dying waiting for them… and when an organ becomes available, you have a VERY limited amount of time to utilize it. But there is really such a short window of time in which the whole process occurs, sometimes 1 day. A person can test negative for covid but actually be positive in that time. So sad that someone got new lungs, only to get covid also.

two: doc photog

Dr. Scott Kobner is the chief emergency room resident at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and an amateur photographer. He photo-documented covid as it occurred at his hospital in stunning black and white.

three: bird flu

Even the headline on this piece made my blood run cold and my heart shutter a little as I remember all the pregnant women in the ICU in 2009, the year we fought H1N1: “Russia tells WHO it has detected first case of avian flu strain in humans.” My first thought: pandemic on top of pandemic??? NOOOO!!!!!! But it turns out the headline is a little misleading because although 2 people have indeed been diagnosed with H1N8, a new bird flu to transmit to humans, it was from direct bird contact and has not passed from human to human. But, you know, we might want to insert the word “yet” in the previous sentence so it reads “it has not YET passed from human to human.” Don’t all the viruses seem to go that way eventually?

Categories
healthcarehumor

Bay Area vs. Nevada

When you say you’ve found something fishy at the nurses’ station…

in San Francisco: some variety of whole fish dish. While I was a student, the ICU nurses tried to feed me whole fried fish every single day. I was way too white and naïve back then to know what I was missing, yum!
Submitted from a hospital in Carson City, Nevada: this book may be correct in its claim, but that means that all fishing jokes are trash…
“If today was a fish, I’d throw it back in.” –said every nurse ever???
Categories
pandemic

A Collection of Covid Links

I have been lax in writing lately. Maybe my posts about mental health have given you a small clue about why? Not so subtle hint… In the background, I’m still reading some news and research, but most of the links I find interesting just end up in a notes file loosely titled “pandemic.” Today, I decided that I could at least go back and share the stories I’ve found interesting enough to save over the last month. Some might be a little out of date, but I know you’ll excuse me.

Double Masking

Most recently, the CDC annouced some shocking news (to me!) about masking. According to this NPR article, “Double Masking Offers More Protection,” with the most common combo being a cloth mask over a disposable (paper) surgical mask. This apparently helps the masks fit tightly and seal any holes that might exist to keep out any stray aerosols. When both people in an “exposure” during research wore their mask according to newly recommended CDC standards, transmissions of covid was reduced by 95%. This is AS EFFECTIVE AS THE VACCINE.

New CDC mask fitting guidelines issued as of Wednesday, February 10, 2021.

So, wear a mask, or even better TWO MASKS!

A Covid Cure?

Monday, January 25, a group of scientists from UCSF announced promising research into the cancer drug Aplidin, currently only approved in Australian to treat multiple myeloma, but currently on limited trial in Spain for covid19. The anti-viral drug is 30 times more potent that the current standard treatment remdesivir. Aplidin, generic name plitidepsin, was discovered in a sea squirt called Aplidium albicans off the coast of Ibiza, Spain but is not commercially available in most of the world.

Read more about the research at “The UCSF-led team racing to find a COVID cure may have found a promising candidate“

Will Covid End Homelessness?

This is the question Emma Gray Ellis asks for Wired Magazine in the article “The Lasting Impact of Covid-19 on Homelessness in the US.” She explores programs like California’s Project Roomkey, which utilized unused hotel rooms to house homeless people to curb the spread of covid among the homeless population by simply getting them off the street. And then the how the plan has transitioned to Project Homekey, which is attempting to turn these places into permanent housing for the homeless. Will attempts across the country to prevent widespread covid in the homeless population actually result in long-lasting change and housing? I really hope so, and some signs point to yes.

January in Santa Clara County ICUs

Its only February and yet January seems years away. It was a horrible post-holiday surge, and in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County was one of the hardest hit–as it was at the very beginning of the pandemic as well. This article about what it’s like inside the ICUs during the surge is fascinating reading, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Categories
intensivecare

I dreamt I died

Work has been shit lately. Covid is still surging in my ICU, and we’re busy with other things too.

Last week was an especially difficult week for our heart failure service, as every patient on service was deemed “not a candidate” for advanced heart failure treatment. Bottom line: this is end-stage heart failure and hospice is the next step. For many patients, this means removing a piece of equipment that’s been helping their heart do it’s job (like an intra-aortic balloon pump, or an Impella). This can mean almost immediate death, but many patients do go home from the ICU to die there. It’s emotionally exhausting but incredibly important work.

And it’s so important to spend some quality time with these patients. Last week, I helped a gentleman who was just days away from getting his Impella out to go home on hospice. He was itchy from laying in bed. I washed his back with real soap and water and washcloths. The put on lotion with a little massage. 20 minutes including gathering supplies. And it made his day! We chatted about traveling and life’s simple pleasures. These are the important moments at the end of life, and I was so happy to be there for him.

But despite that part of my job being so meaningful, there are other parts that are nearly unbearable. There is a day shift charge nurse who is mad at me no matter what I do, and who demands a ridiculous amount of report on our patients. She wants a full head to toe but the 90 second version. Do you know how long it takes me to prepare a cohesive and comprehensive 90 second head to toe report that also includes the plan and updates from when she was last on shift??? It takes about 5 hours to do it for 30-36 patients. And when I don’t give her all the info she wants, she asks for it in aggressive tones. If I don’t know the answers, she will eye roll, sigh and slam turn the pages of her printout. Actually, she does that sometimes anyways if she’s annoyed by something, anything.

I find this to create a workplace so toxic that it gives me panic attacks. I dread giving her report. I get short of breath talking to her. I often cry after interactions with her.

So what do I do when I tell my managers about this and nothing changes? That is the million dollar question facing me right now.

Oh, I almost forgot my dream. I had a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in my dream, but it became dislodged internally. FYI, I’ve never ever seen this happen in real life… I was bleeding to death, surrounded by work mates. They could do nothing. And finally, as I was about to die, one of the help pressure on the bleeding spot as the warm feeling spread through my chest and I lost consciousness.

Whoa. Is that symbolic? I hope not.