Postcard from an overrun ICU: 'The problem is we are running out of hallways'

[demmiblue]

BILLINGS — Nurses fill the hospital room to turn a patient from his stomach to his back. The ventilator forcing air into him is most effective when he’s on his stomach, so he is in that position most hours of the day, sedated and paralyzed by drugs.

Lying on his stomach all those hours has produced sores on his face, and one nurse dabs at the wounds. The dark lesions are insignificant given his current state, but she continues just the same, gently, soothingly, appearing to whisper to him as she works.

Nurses at Billings Clinic prepare to turn a patient from his stomach to his back in the hospital's intensive care unit on Sept. 17.
Billings Clinic

The man has been a patient at Billings Clinic for nearly a month, most of that time in the hospital’s intensive care unit. He is among other patients, room after room of them, with the same grim tubes inserted down their throats. They have covid-19 — the vast majority unvaccinated against the virus, the hospital says. Visitors generally aren’t permitted in these rooms, but the man’s mother comes most days to gaze through a glass window for the allowed 15 minutes.

This all happened Friday. He was dead, at age 24, by Sunday morning.

The hospital’s morgue cart arrived at the ICU — as it frequently has these days — then the room was sterilized, another patient took the man’s place, and the cycle began again. In the past week, 14 people have died of covid here, the state’s largest hospital.

https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/postcard-from-an-overrun-icu-the-problem-is-we-are-running-out-of-hallways/article_0ffd2eca-d729-5c45-8677-d68681ccbd83.html

[RicROC]

1. it's a national health emergency.

[Irish_Dem]

4. And 30% of the American public cannot function in an adult way during a national emergency.

A medical emergency involving life and death.

[GusBob]

2. During the height of the last wave

A physician said about patients in hallways " HIPAA rules were being bent"

I think if more people could see the horrible condition these patients are in when they die ( undertakers are reporting them as 'unrecognizable') more people would take the pandemic more seriously and get vaccinated.

My greatest fear is, we are going to go through this again in the future with another virus, maybe worse. Will we have learned our lessons?

[PatSeg]

3. I know and I have serious doubts

that things will be better. It appears there are some people who cannot be reached. They will just view another pandemic as some government overreach, an attempt to control their lives and take away their "freedom". Well, at least the ones that survive this pandemic.

[Irish_Dem]

5. I agree. A big chunk of the American people are unreachable. And will only get worse the next time.

[PatSeg]

6. So sad, as they aren't necessarily

the "other". Many of them are friends, family, and neighbors that we've known for years. Even at their worst, few could have predicted how far down the rabbit hole they would go.

[Irish_Dem]

7. I agree, it has been quite surprising.

Reminds me of the old movie: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Who took our friends and neighbor and made them monsters?

[PatSeg]

8. Oh yes, that is usually the first

thing that pops in my head - they've become "Pod People" and often their own family doesn't recognize them. It is so unsettling, like waking up in some bizarre science fiction movie. I've seen a lot in my life, but nothing prepared me for this (well except for science fiction flicks) and I will go to my grave analyzing it.

[Irish_Dem]

9. I know, it is a fascinating phenomenon from a clinical perspective.

There will be doctoral dissertations on the subject.

But heart breaking and infuriating at the same time.

I am cyclical, but I didn't see this coming, not to depth and extent of all of it.

I guess I should have seen it coming after Trump and the GOP criminal enterprise and propaganda,

[PatSeg]

10. I'm not sure anyone could have predicted

how bad it would get or how quickly, probably because we have never had such powerful and global brainwashing tools like we have with the Internet and other right-wing media. Of course, it didn't really happen overnight as it would seem. It took years to cultivate their brains to be so receptive and easily manipulated.

Yes, analyzing it is fascinating, but having to actually live it in real time, is really disturbing.

[Irish_Dem]

11. Yes it was a long time in the making. And yes, fascinating, but quite disturbing.

It was all simmering just below the surface.

It took Trump, the GOP, and a national emergency of life and death proportions to make it all explode.

Dealing with the pandemic and these non vaxxers has been devastating to the rest of the population and particularly to healthcare workers.

[PatSeg]

12. And I think if it hadn't been Trump,

someone else would have come along and done similar things. The field was ready and waiting for that kind of person or persons actually, as similar things are happening all over the world.

[Irish_Dem]

13. I agree.

Trump was the symptom of the rot already there.

The GOP and Putin would have found someone else to fill the bill.