A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 -- Even in His Young Patients

[TheBlackAdder]

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“I have patients in their early 40s and, yeah, I was kind of shocked. I’m seeing people who look relatively healthy with a minimal health history, and they are completely wiped out, like they’ve been hit by a truck. This is knocking out what should be perfectly fit, healthy people. Patients will be on minimal support, on a little bit of oxygen, and then all of a sudden, they go into complete respiratory arrest, shut down and can’t breathe at all.”
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“It’s called acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS. That means the lungs are filled with fluid. And it’s notable for the way the X-ray looks: The entire lung is basically whited out from fluid. Patients with ARDS are extremely difficult to oxygenate. It has a really high mortality rate, about 40%. The way to manage it is to put a patient on a ventilator. The additional pressure helps the oxygen go into the bloodstream.
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“Typically with ARDS, the lungs become inflamed. It’s like inflammation anywhere: If you have a burn on your arm, the skin around it turns red from additional blood flow. The body is sending it additional nutrients to heal. The problem is, when that happens in your lungs, fluid and extra blood starts going to the lungs. Viruses can injure cells in the walls of the alveoli, so the fluid leaks into the alveoli. A telltale sign of ARDS in an X-ray is what’s called ‘ground glass opacity,’ like an old-fashioned ground glass privacy window in a shower. And lungs look that way because fluid is white on an X-ray, so the lung looks like white ground glass, or sometimes pure white, because the lung is filled with so much fluid, displacing where the air would normally be.”

“With our coronavirus patients, once they’re on ventilators, most need about the highest settings that we can do. About 90% oxygen, and 16 of PEEP, positive end-expiratory pressure, which keeps the lung inflated. This is nearly as high as I’ve ever seen. The level we’re at means we are running out of options.
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“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.


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/medical-worker-describes-terrifying-lung-failure-coronavirus_n_5e77a419c5b62f90bc4ca366

Shit!

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[smirkymonkey]

1. Terrifying!

[emmaverybo]

2. Saw this three years ago. More than once. Couldn't get rid of the image. Did not put her on

ventilator. Lungs were not going to recover. Hospice. Morphine and Ativan. Finally peace. Paramedics told me like drowning. I won’t draw the picture. Awful.

Sedating such cases is merciful. Does not cause the death. Some can recover.

[livetohike]

3. Horrible. Trump should go visit a few patients. However,

I don’t think human suffering moves him at all.

[The_jackalope]

4. Respiratory distress is really horrible

I'm 69 with asthma and heart failure. If I get severe Covid-19, sedate me to the eyeballs and let me go.

[rainin]

5. This is terrifying

I am so afraid. For myself, my family, my community, my country. The WORLD! I don't believe for one second that we would be where we are now were Obama still President. This is tRump's doing!

[hamsterjill]

6. Same here.

I am becoming more and more frightened, too, with each passing day.

[Goodheart]

7. This brings tears to my eyes.

Terrifying.