Nurses, doctors feel strain as virus races through Arizona

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https://www.ksat.com/news/national/2020/06/27/nurses-doctors-feel-strain-as-virus-races-through-arizona/

PHOENIX – They saw the ominous photos: Crowded hospitals, exhausted nurses, bodies piling up in morgues. It was far away, in New York, northern Italy and other distant places.

Now, after three months of anxiously waiting and preparing, Arizona nurses and doctors are on the front lines as the coronavirus rips through the state, making it one of the world’s hot spots. The trickle of a few virus patients in March became a steady stream two weeks after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ended a stay-home order in mid-May and allowed most businesses to reopen, and is now a scourge with no end in sight.

An intensive care nurse in metro Phoenix nurse said she cries when she thinks about all the people who have died from the virus in her hospital, or the times she clutched a frightened patient’s hands during an intubation. Medical staff describe crowded emergency rooms where patients are put on ventilators waiting for a spot in the intensive care unit to open up. There are tearful goodbyes through a patio window in Tucson.

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“This is not a sprint, this is a marathon. In fact it’s an ultra-marathon,” Goldberg said.

Death is ever-present in ICUs, but with virus patients, it is even more common, and often grueling and drawn out.

Patients on ventilators are put in what is essentially a medically-induced state of suspended animation as machines breathe for their virus-ravaged lungs. They’re hooked up to multiple IVs and drains, with a ventilator tube down their throats. They can stay in the ICU for weeks or months.

Nurses walk into their units for 12-hour shifts, gear up in gowns, respirators, gloves and goggles and enter an other-worldly setting. Patients are cut off from their families, and often all reality. They’re frequently flipped onto their stomachs for hours at a time, a move called proning that has become a go-to for helping those patients breathe but is a grueling task that can take six to eight nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors to accomplish.

For younger nurses, some of the hardest deaths are those of young, previously healthy patients, including a woman less than 25 years old who died in Scottsdale.

She deteriorated rapidly, said Caroline Maloney, a nurse at HonorHealth’s Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center with 28 years’ experience working in ICUs. “And it was very emotional," she said. “I know one nurse in particular couldn’t even talk about it.

“They’re seeing this first-hand, and its unnerving for them to see when their peers are in a hospital bed and they have to take care of them,” Maloney said.

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Families of virus patients generally aren’t allowed bedside visits, leaving it to caregivers to arrange phone calls and FaceTime links via tablet computers. The hospital in Tucson is a rare case where families can visit their loved ones — at least through a window. That’s because it is an older facility and primarily one-story, with all its ICU rooms on the ground level. Each has a small patio with windows.

It's where Muzzy often leads family members as they say goodbye to their loved one after making the decision to end care.

“I say it’s physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually draining,” she said. “Our nurses, the ones that do the 12½ hour shifts, they endure this day in and day out. They are amazing. They’re very strong.”

[FarPoint]

1. This is only going to escalate...

So much defiance to the simple protective protocols 1 month ago and currently...The virus is so deeply seeded into the state....May even be worse than New York...