Medical News

COVID

Some COVID facts, straight from my hospital experience. We are still short staffed, but that is more a pay issue than an overcrowding issue. I am still working 60 hours a week.

We are still at higher than normal patient levels. Our admitted patients are almost all either cardiac or COVID patients. We are seeing younger patients now. The typical patient being admitted now is in their early to mid 50s.

More patients are critical and are dying than before. I am seeing an average of 2 to 3 patients die of COVID related problems each day. There were none yesterday at my hospital, but four the day before. Nearly all of the deaths are in older people, but there are a few younger ones.

The treatment for COVID that I am seeing is largely high flow oxygen, Remdesivir, Vitamins C, D, and Zinc. We got a new protocol this week: any COVID patient who is on more than 6 liters of oxygen has to be placed on continuous remote blood oxygen monitoring. We don’t have enough of those for everyone, so surgical patients, those with a DNR, and other low priority patients are having to have their blood O2 checked manually every hour instead of continuously.

Anyhow, I managed to get the weekend off, so I posting on this blog will be light. I am going to relax for the weekend.

Enjoy your labor day.

By Divemedic, ago

Why get a test?

I just heard from my daughter. Her children (my grandkids) are staying at their (other) grandparents’ house. My granddaughter, the oldest of the two, was complaining of a headache and had a fever. So the grandparents took her to the Doc in a Box, who tested her for COVID.

You guessed it- she has COVID. Now at seven years old, she is unlikely to have much more than a mild illness from it. Any of you who have raised kids know that the little ones get mystery illnesses all of the time, and most of them come with a fever. You treat it with children’s Tylenol, fluids, and rest. What HAS changed is now my daughter can’t go to work, the kids can’t go to school, and my grandson is now going to get tested as well.

I just don’t understand what you gain by getting a COVID test. Whether it is COVID or some other illness, what you do to treat it is the same: Tylenol, fluids, rest, and maybe something for any other symptoms you have. How does knowing that it is COVID change anything? The only thing it changes is transforming you and the other members of your household into pariah for the next two weeks.

If your curiosity simply MUST be satisfied, take the at home test. At least with the at home test, no one else but you has to know if you have COVID.

In case you are keeping score, the members of my family who have had COVID:

  • Daughter in law to be (vaccinated)
  • Father in law (half vaccinated at the time)
  • Mother in law (half vaccinated at the time)
  • Daughter (not vaccinated)
  • Mother (vaccinated)
  • Brother (vaccinated)
  • Granddaughter (not vaccinated)

In addition, I have eight other friends who have had it. Most of them caught it before the vaccines were available. Two of them had COVID after being vaccinated. Not one of them had a serious infection.

The most serious of them were my mother in law and father in law, both of whom were sick at home for a couple of weeks. Everyone else had symptoms best described as a cold.

Again, we need to be spending our resources finding out why a small percentage of the public is having serious problems with this infection. Why them? What is different about them?

By Divemedic, ago

Purging the military

Here come the camps. Military troops are the first ones to be purged. The language is subtle, but it’s there.

allowances would certainly be made for religious exemptions and for those with pre-existing conditions that precluded vaccinations.

Admiral John Kirby

You have to have been in the military to catch the lie in this one. Chaplains in the military are commissioned officers. When I was in, they used to tell us that they were loyal to God first and the military second, so we should feel safe in talking to them. I didn’t believe that for a second. As officers, their careers depend on their fitrep. God won’t be the one writing their fitrep, their superior officer would. One small phrase in a fitrep can end a career. There won’t be any religious exemptions.

Medical doctors in the military? You guessed it, they are officers, too. If the President says the jab is safe, it’s safe. Orders are orders. There won’t be any medical exemptions.

So what then?

 “They will also be offered a chance to sit down with their chain of command and their leadership to talk about the risks that their objection will impose on the unit and on the force and on their teammates.”

Conversations with the chain of command aren’t what civilians think of as conversations. In the military, the superior talks. The subordinate says things like “Yes, sir,” or perhaps, “Yes, Sergeant,” or even, “Yes, Chief.” Anything else leads to the next step.

“There are — it is — once you mandate it, as we’ve done, it is a lawful order. It’s a lawful order, and we fully anticipate that our troops are going to follow lawful orders,”

The UCMJ is specific on this one. The one that applies here is Article 92: Failure to Obey a Lawful Order or Regulation. What is a lawful order? Whatever the President or an officer says it is. You can try to be a “bedroll lawyer,” but it won’t work. No officer in this military is going to oppose this President, not unless he or she wants to also be charged with an Article 92.

So what happens when you violate Article 92? A violation of or failure to obey lawful general order or regulation may result in a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years. It would also be considered a FELONY conviction.

Does anyone reading this doubt that anyone pushing this will be broken at the wheel?

By Divemedic, ago

Now my brother

Two days ago, I announced that my mother has COVID, but only had mild symptoms. Last week, my Brother received a so-called booster of the vaccine. Today, he was diagnosed with COVID. It seems that even fully vaccinated people with booster shots can get it.

One of my employees today told me that her mother is in the ICU on a ventilator, with an exceptionally bad case of COVID. The mother is unvaccinated, and there are many people that will view this as: “AHA! If she had been vaccinated, she would be fine!”

They would be ignoring that this woman got sick a month ago, and her doctor diagnosed her with tonsilitis. Three weeks later, she woke up gasping for breath, and passed out. She was taken to the ER, where her advanced case of COVID, which her doctor had misdiagnosed, was finally treated.

So is this a case of no vaccine, or a case of an untreated, serious case of an infection caused by a medical error? How does a doctor not test someone for COVID if they come in to the office sick? Or was the test faulty?

Another 12 hour shift today. Sorry I don’t have anything else for you. Tired. I spent all day in the COVID isolation wing, where I walked 10,000 steps. I am worn out.

By Divemedic, ago

Don’t get tested

Mississippi says to isolate after testing positive for COVID-19, or face up to 5 years in prison and a fine. They are going to make it a FELONY to not isolate after testing positive. The crime? Failure to obey an order of a health official that involves a fatal disease. This is the same penalty as battery on a LEO or selling small amounts of weed.

Under this order, you can’t have visitors and must lock yourself in a different room of the house from the rest of your family.

Or you could not take a COVID test. If you take a COVID test, what will it change, except to possibly make you a felon? Just don’t take the test.

Also in the same story, the state’s only Level 1 trauma center, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, also announced on Friday that it would require all staff and students to be vaccinated, a reversal from its previous policy that allowed employees and students to choose not to be vaccinated so long as they wore N95 masks.

Refusing to take the test will only work for awhile. Prison times are here for not isolating. Soon, there will be prison time for not vaccinating. The isolation camps are coming.

I won’t be put in a camp, no matter what it is called, or why they want to do it.

By Divemedic, ago

A couple of things

I was at work today, I just finished a 12 hour shift. We had even more COVID patients. We had four patients die today. Here is the issue:

Many (the majority) of the patients in the hospital are older. Some are younger, but not most. The youngest COVID patient I have seen on the floor is 19. The oldest is 96.

The problem here is that they have more and more issues with getting oxygen into their bloodstream. The ones who are really sick can be on high flow oxygen at 60 liters per minute and still have oxygen saturations in the 60’s. Once the percentage drops low enough, their heart slows down, blood pressure drops, and they require a response team to keep them alive for the trip to their new room in the ICU.

One woman today with dementia pulled off her mask, and her oxygen saturation dropped to 17 percent within 90 seconds. That is the lowest percentage I have seen on a conscious person ever.

COVID isn’t fake. It is a real disease. Let’s get that out of the way.

Some portion of the people who get it, maybe fifteen percent, seem to have a lot of trouble and have to be admitted to the hospital. A portion of them seem to get worse until they have to be put in the ICU. Some of them die, some of them wind up with long term problems.

I am not and have not ever said that COVID is a fake illness.

Where we need to be spending our scientific efforts is in discovering why some people suffer more than others, and why some have problems recovering fully. So why aren’t we doing that?

Because of the real problem. Some people in and out of our government have discovered that this crisis can be used to create fear, and with that fear, they can take more power and money for themselves. Now that they have that money and power, they are not likely to give it up.

By Divemedic, ago

My mother

My mother, who is 76 years old, called me late last night. She has been vaccinated. She wears a mask. She also has COVID. Sounds scary, right? Her symptoms? She describes them as being just like a mild cold.

This is where the pro-vaccine crowd will tell you “See, you got the vaccine, so it isn’t as serious.” They forget that the vast majority of people who get COVID have mild, or no, symptoms. This is an illness with a 99 percent survival rate.

By Divemedic, ago

Unbelieveable

My wife attended a funeral today. The man who was the guest of honor had died of COVID, and was the father of a friend. My wife went to pay her respects. The story that she was told left me speechless.

When the man became sick to the point where he was not doing well, they took him to a local hospital. (Not the one where I work). It turns out to have been the worst mistake that they could have made. After he was admitted, he became sicker. They would not allow any family in to see him. For the next ten days, his health began to suffer. He was moved to the ICU.

A wealthy friend of the family hired a medical evacuation team and a private jet to fly him to a larger, better equipped hospital. The better hospital agreed to accept him. The medical team arrived at the airport and was ready to take him to the other hospital. The small, local hospital refused to allow him to leave.

A few days later, he died. A Catholic, and a priest was not even allowed in to give last rites. He died alone, having not seen his family in over two weeks.

I would find out the name of the doctor that did this to my family. He would receive a visit from me, where I delivered some hard lessons.

I recently had a similar situation occur at my hospital. A fellow employee came to me because she needed help with obtaining information about her mother, who was a patient in the COVID ward. I helped her. She and her mother were both thankful.

I was called by my boss and told not to help her and used HIPAA as an excuse. I said OK, and then told my fellow employee what paperwork to fill out that would require the hospital to release the information.

My boss found out, and I got a HUGE ass chewing. I asked her how she would feel if that were HER mother. She told me that was beside the point. Things got heated, and I am surprised that I wasn’t fired myself. My wife was concerned.

My wife is upset about the death of her friend’s father. I told her that was the exact reason why I would not violate my principles for a paycheck. “I was just following orders” is not something I am prepared to try and use as a defense.

She understands that I have morals and principles that I live by. There are some things that I just won’t do. One of them is to violate those principles, and I don’t care how big of a paycheck I lose as a result.

The doctors and other healthcare personnel who did this should be ashamed of themselves.

By Divemedic, ago