Diary of a Covid-19 Doctor: 14 Days in a NYC Hospital | WIRED

we had two patients died during the day today and four more almost died I don't know how people have been working like this I just too much for me [Music] today is April 14th I am headed to New York I really have never seen the same resistible Airport this empty I mean there's just nobody here so I got a long flight ahead of me but be there soon and get settled in when the covin pandemic hit i really had a strong sense of guilt about not being on the frontlines not taking care of patients and not feeling like i was doing all that I could was everybody is on oxygen and almost everybody is a Cove occasionally about 8:40 in the morning I'm heading in to the hospital like I'm guessing this is a later start than most of my days will be but I'm just gonna get orientation and get tested for my mask and so on Here I am so home hi PPE on my head I just came out of the unit so I took off my gown and gloves but you see its head these goggles are a little big on my face I've got my n95 under here my head is small this is a lot of equipment with my face anyway I'll check back more later so I just got back to my hotel I just wanted to capture what my face looks like after not even that many hours so I'm probably gonna start using band-aids like pre-emptive band-aids I was told that the hospital typically has 50 ICU beds and they've now got 200 because of all the conversions they've done to help take care of patients in the current pandemic [Music] it's about 10:00 p.m. on April 17th pretty early in my shift I had a patient who got a lot worse very quickly and he was actually of the five pages I was taking care of he was the healthiest one so I really hadn't mentally prepared for that we were able to give him the treatment that he needed and he's doing much better now but I think that was a very quick introduction to how patients do when they've got this disease that they can be fine one minute and then just really not the next they're very very dependent on the oxygen support that they're receiving is April 18th pretty early in the morning so here we are it's my second night here in the ICU so far I had one patient who coded meaning nearly died last night and I had another patient who coded tonight and unfortunately he didn't make it and I just got off the phone with the patient's family and I can definitely see how doing this day in and day out would get very very hard it is almost 2 a.m. on April 20th I really feel like I'm on a roller coaster right the first couple of nights I was here were worse than I thought they would be in terms of how the patients were doing tonight from the time I walked in there were a number of patients who really needed kind of emergency care I'm not sure what's gonna happen with those patients it's too soon to tell but we've had to be pretty aggressive in our interventions but you know the patient who almost died last night is still here so that's some cause for hope a lot of these patients even if they had normal kidneys before have had injuries to their kidneys from the disease and from their blood pressure being low and having trouble with oxygen and so now they need to dialysis there's only so many machines there's only so many nurses there's only so many hours in a day so who gets it who is deciding who gets it hmm I'm signed up to be rationing care I don't think any of us did so that's kind of the latest struggle noticing a lot of things that are different from you know normal times for example in the ICU typically if we need changes made to a ventilator if we have patients who need suctioning or anything like that there would be a respiratory therapist who provide that care I think that there aren't quite enough of them to go around so I've learned how to manipulate all sorts of ventilators we also have many different kinds of ventilators usually an intensive care unit you have the same model throughout the unit but we have at least 3 or 4 different kinds here many of which are not intended to be used in a continuous basis they're made for transportation so temporary use from to get a patient from one place to another there are challenges in getting x-rays challenges and getting certain types of medications these are all things that are different from what would normally be happening I mean if we had all the resources it is the morning of April 20th around 9:00 a.m. I gotten home from my shift and showered and I'm getting ready to go to sleep last night we had a couple of patients who were close to dying but neither of them did one of them had gotten quite sick overnight and we wanted to call the family so that they could have a chance to communicate with her an anticipation that this might be the last opportunity that they would have and this was the first time that I actually watched it happen so one of my colleagues called the patient's family and then stood over the patient's bed holding her her phone up so that they could see her and I listened to them try to say goodbye over the phone they couldn't help but think about you know that were my mother how awful that would be to not be able to hold her hand don't you know that she was alone anyway I just wish it didn't have to be like this and I'm glad I haven't had to watch that 20 times or 40 times or however many times in the last few weeks because I don't I'm not I'm not cut out for that but I'm gonna try to watch something like hard-headed didn't go to sleep it's position for used to fixing problems and helping people that's why we do what we do but when we don't have medications at work when there aren't ventilator settings that can help people get enough oxygen and get rid of their carbon dioxide it feels very frustrating on top of that a lot of the doctors here have friends or colleagues who are critically ill in other hospitals in New York and so they're constantly thinking about and worried about those people in addition to being worried about their patients and many of them are living apart from their families in order to prevent infecting their family members so they're going through this very stressful challenging time basically on their own so far it seems to me that most of the people are coping by really not thinking about it and not processing it I'm just showing up and doing the work as best they can and hoping things get better now I'm working days feeling less like the vampire and today somewhat miraculously was actually kind of a good day we had a patient who was able to come off the ventilator which is pretty incredible because I think that hasn't happened actually in this unit since the unit opened we're at the point now where we're starting to see fewer people get admitted every day so things are I think starting to slow down a little bit which is great the patience we have now though are all really really sick and probably will be here for quite a while so it's not like it's totally over it is April 24th I had a patient today who was writing notes so he's on the ventilator with the breathing tube but he was hand writing notes to people and we FaceTime with his family and you know he's mentally very with it and knows what's happening but he's requiring a lot of oxygen from the ventilator to get oxygen into his tissues and he's also on the younger side so it's very hard to watch because I just don't know whether he's going to get out of this so far of all the people I've seen on the ventilator who have been really sick the way he is only one person in the last 10 days has been able to get off the ventilator but he wrote today I'm not giving up so even with a breathing tube and all sorts of IVs and tubes coming out of everything and being on all the medication that he's on he's not giving up it is April 25th at least today when I came in no one had died overnight and hopefully no one will die today if that happens I'll be the first 24-hour period since I've been here that we would have had no deaths in our little unit I'm supposed to be leaving the hospital a few hours ago but one of my patients I almost died just as I was about to leave so I stayed to try to take care of him and to talk to his family here anyway so it's 11:30 now we had two patients died during the day today and four more almost died it's just just in the last couple of hours you have one good day and then have a really really awful day right after what I miss my staircase I don't know how people have been working like this I just too much for me I know I'm gonna sleep even tonight because I'm gonna be worried about this guy and whether he's gonna make it I can't stay here all night I gotta be here so I'm gonna go see if I can get some rest that is April 26 yesterday was it was a rough day and it was long and we lost two patients during the day neither one was totally unexpected but it's still hard to see as I was about to leave we actually had four patients who got really really sick at the same time and came close to dying one of them was a patient I was falling closely and I felt I guess sort of attached to I just didn't feel like I could leave when he was that sick so I ended up staying until we got him sort of stabilized um I mean he was still quite ill but it seemed like we had helped him a little bit so I had to call his family and help them to FaceTime with him because I wasn't sure if he was gonna make it through the night and I always feel like I'm intruding when I'm when I'm there and I'm hope I have to be there except hold the camera we don't have a holder the patient obviously can't hold it themselves so it's it's very hard to hear people tell their family member to fight and that their they can get through this especially when as a physician I I'm not really sure in that moment that they are gonna get through it but we all need a little hope I also think I'm just very sleep-deprived I I don't think I've slept more than five hours at a time since I've been here and I haven't had any days off which is my choosing I think I think he would have been happy for me to have a day off but I just felt like I'm here for a limited time and I wanted to do the most that I could do it is April 28th and I'm about to head out to the airport just been reflecting back a little bit on my experience here in New York you know I don't really know exactly what I expected I hadn't really thought about the emotional toll I had thought about you know the medical care and how challenging that could be since we don't know much about this disease of the people I took care of with Kovan ammonia they all either have died or remain critically ill in the hospital at this point just in two weeks here seeing this much death has been really really hard for me so they're already 5 or 6 weeks into this now and even as things slow down and get a little bit better they really need time to recuperate and we don't know when things will get worse again which i think is really psychologically challenging I'm thinking about if there's a second wave you know I would like to come back and what are the skills I should try to gain between now and then to be the most helpful to people here so I'll be thinking about all of them and hoping for the best I am back home now in California I just had a nasal swab done yesterday to see if I was Co fit positive which was not a pleasant experience they take a swab and put it basically straight back going back towards your brain and then they do that on both sides just you know in case and I got my result tonight and I am magically somehow negative I really am perplexed as to how that's possible given that I was really exposed to a lot of kovat for a couple of weeks for many hours a day but I'll take it as a win I mean it could be a false negative I suppose but I'm just gonna I'm gonna roll with that

Channel: WIRED

Views: 392,983

Keywords: doctor, covid 19, coronavirus, doctor diary, coroavirus doctor, covid 19 doctor, doctor covid, doctor covid 19, new york city hospital, nyc hospital, new york hospital, new york city hospital covid, nyc hospital covid, covid nyc hospital, wired covid, covid 19 doctor interview, doctor interview, covid 19 doctor diary, pandemic, nyc covid 19 wired, wired, coronavirus wired, coronavirus nyc, coronavirus new york, new york covid, new york covid 19, dr covid

Id: FYQz4QvYEXA

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020