From today's LA Times: Dispatches From The Pandemic: When nothing more can be done.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

By Fran Chalin

He came into the Orange County hospital because he had trouble breathing.
A week later the sign “caution droplets” hung on his ICU room door.
“Droplets,” code for COVID-19.
He hasn’t been conscious for 36 hours.
Only the ventilator keeps him alive.
Together, the doctor, hospice social worker and I tell the family nothing more can be done.
They nod, they have no fight left.
The doctor hates that he cannot save this man.
But he can allow them to say goodbye.
He tells them they can go in groups of two for 10 minutes.
He leaves us. He has to help someone else.
He cares for two floors of people with COVID-19, 51 people in all.
We tell them this is special, the doctor hasn’t allowed this before.
They mumble thanks. Translation: Isn’t that generous of you.
I stand outside the window into his room. When the 10 minutes are up, I wave.
His family members’ eyes plead, two fingers in the air, two minutes?
They smile and laugh in his room in case he can sense them.
But they sob once they slide shut his door.
The final two are his wife and first-born.
She collapses when she reaches his bed.
Their son barely catches her.
She kisses her husband, whispers in his ear.
I hope he senses her near him.
They don’t look at me when they walk away.
While hospital staffers extract the breathing tube
the social worker and I wait outside his room
because microscopic COVID-19 droplets will release into the air.
Once the tube is removed we prepare to enter his room.
We don’t have to go in, but we do. Mostly for him,
but for the staffers as well. They should have support too.
We sanitize our hands, then don gloves.
Then the N95 mask,
hairnet,
face shield,
then gown.
It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also keeping us alive.
Probably.
The staffers inspect us.
They are the best of humankind.
I ask if co-workers have had the virus.
Sure, they say. They point to the ones who recovered and are back working.
I don’t ask if any co-workers died. They have to focus on now.
Staffers adjust his medications.
He won’t feel the removal of the tube.
His family had asked if they could FaceTime
after the tube is removed.
The social worker holds up the phone.
I hold the patient’s hand. We hear his family:
“We love you, be at peace, go with God.”
The social worker is used to being around the dying, but this is different.
Ten minutes is not long enough to say goodbye.
She’s young, this is her first pandemic.
She was a child when people with AIDS died every day for years.
I was there, I was 25.
There wasn’t enough time then either.
We all watch the monitor, the lines become flatter.
We hear his last breath. Then nothing.
The nurse nods to us.
The social worker tells the family that he’s gone to be with God.
I don’t have her faith.
I don’t know where he’s going except to the morgue.
His relatives are wailing. We try to say how sorry we are, but they’ve hung up.
Does anyone else feel like they’ve just witnessed an execution?
We slide the door open, just enough to get out.
There is a receptacle for the shield and the hairnet.
I put my N95 into a plastic bag to leave out in the sun at home.
There aren’t enough of these masks to have a new one every time, but the nurse says, “It’s OK.
Just put it in the sun, the virus dies in the sun.”
I hope she’s right.
COVID-19 is disproportionately killing Black and brown people.
I’ve heard people speculate: Didn’t they all have lung issues,
or diabetes, or health problems that
made them more likely to get infected and die?
That sounds a lot like: Didn’t gays and IV drug users bring AIDS on themselves?
Disposable populations.
Outside the hospital there is a billboard.
“HEROES WORK HERE.” I want to scream.
Hero is just another word for better you than me.
The social worker calls me the next morning. She couldn’t sleep.
“This was bad,” she says with a sigh, “I’ll see you at the hospital soon.”
And now the memory comes back full force.
The other pandemic, AIDS.
Caring for the next person, and the next one.
I’m worried about myself and feeling guilty for even thinking about myself.
I’m worried I’ll forget that balance is important.
Forty years later, there is still the next one and the next one.
So tell me: Why aren’t you wearing a mask?

Fran Chalin has been a hospice chaplain for more than 10 years.

(There were no paragraphs, so I copied the entire post.)

[gristy]

1. "Does anyone else feel like they've just witnessed an execution?"

That sentence stands out for me.

[LakeArenal]

2. Powerful,sad,lives lost.

Come on people do it for their families.

Follow the guidelines.

[stopdiggin]

3. Thank you. I think I need a moment ..

a very good piece

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[Volaris]

4. If this were read verbatim, at the Republican convention, half of those in attendance would laugh.

The rest would get their guns; because FreeDumb n Mah Ritez.

They dont know.
They dont WANT to.

The Republican Party as it exists in America today, is an existential threat to ALL of us, and must be destroyed.

[TNNurse]

5. Excellent

I have a lasting bond with a hospice chaplain from when I worked.

We were both on duty when a young woman died on Mother's Day. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few years before. She never told anyone and had no treatment. They had brought her to the hospital the night before having no idea what was wrong. She had a young child.

As we left the room to give the family time, the chaplain told me someone had asked him if he "enjoyed his job". He was a Hospice Chaplain . He told them it was something that was needed and he thought he did it pretty well. He asked me if I felt the same way.

Ran into him in the bank last year, we are both retired. We both said something brief about that day. It has stayed with us for years.

He is a great guy with whom to have a bond.

[TygrBright]

6. This (or similar) has now happened more than 137,000 times.

In hospitals and homes and other places all over America.

If we had a government that had competence and compassion, that number would be much lower.

But that number is still climbing.

By the hundreds, daily.

This scene, or something like it, is repeating.

And the woe is accumulating.

Because it's more important to "pwn the libz" than have a competent, responsible President.

heartbrokenly,
Bright

[Blue_true]

15. All the deaths are sad for someone, even the deaths of people who were lousy human beings while

healthy. But the ones that trouble me most are kids dying alone, with no family at their bedside.

[Kid Berwyn]

7. Facebook to those pesky GOP knowitalls.

The ones who, unless paid, don’t like to lift a finger for another human being.

[Nevilledog]

8. Heartbreaking.

[alp227]

9. Link to article

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-12/chaplain-covid-hospital-masks

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Thanks for the link!

I have an electronic subscription and could not find a link at all.

Glad you were able to get it.

[No Vested Interest]

11. Thank you, Peggy. The compassion shown is so reflective of you and your compassion. nt

[DSandra]

12. A scene like this needs to be made into a PSA type ad

A heartwrenching PSA that hopefully would get more people to take the virus and prevention of it seriously.

[Blue_true]

16. I saw a picture taken in Houston.

Two medical staff were doing chest compressions on a COVID19 patients who was attached to a respirator. Another medical staff was working with the respirator during the process and a fourth was holding some type of instrument, standing near the patient. There was some space between the third and fourth medical staff, so it was possible to see the patient’s upper body and side of head. The patient was an African American man, as best I could tell from the picture, late thirties to middle age. The sad thing is that scene won’t register with a lot of conservative and moderate Whites, we will only see those type of people become cooperative and start forcing politicians to have people wear PPE like masks when the dying patients look like them, a youngish White men or women, laying comatose on a table as their body give out on them, despite efforts to save them.

[Romesduke]

13. Dispatches From The Pandemic: When nothing more can be done.

Dear California Peggy,

This is a very emotional and moving story, thank you for sharing. It can get frustrating when crucial details are left out such as if this man had a medical history or an underlying condition. Its clear this man had troubles breathing for at least a week, llater had a sign hanged on his ICU door to indicate the condition and was unconscious for 36 hours, with just a ventilator that kept him alive.

It's disappointing "there is nothing more we can do" however I believe this goes further beyond giving up on this dear man.
It is more grievous to understand this was another COVID-19 scenario and case closed!
This was a flesh body, a precious soul, a healthy human being with feelings whom was consumed without unidentified details or justifiable explanation. This is simply about a LIFE.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

14. Welcome to DU, Romesduke! And I hear you.

I did not write this.

I believe the author wanted to show how important it is for everyone to wear a mask during this tumultuous time of the covid19 pandemic.

That was the point of her last sentence in the essay.

[Blue_true]

17. COVID19 damages internal organs on something like 90% of people that

get out on a ventilator that nothing can be done. Their bodies simply shut down.

The key point is that for many people that ended up at that point, their lives could have been very possibly saved had the rest of us observed proper mask wearing protocol. Too many people are following the lead of a moron, Donald Trump and not doing what keep people alive.

[malaise]

18. No words

This did not have to happen