report from the front: Resp. Therapist on COVID catastrophe

[greenman3610]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/medical-worker-describes-terrifying-lung-failure-from-covid-19-even-in-his-young-patients/


“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we’ve had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe. When you’re in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don’t know when someone is trying to help you, so you’ll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I really didn't need to know this.