Page - 467 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
Image of the Page - 467 -
Text of the Page - 467 -
467A
View from the Front Lines of a COVID-19 Outbreak
mile wide. He greeted me cheerfully, told me he felt fine, and wanted
a coffee. Billy makes friends instantly with everyone. He remembered
the fever but now felt as good as ever. On Wednesday night he had
a fever again and became short of breath, with low oxygen satura-
tion in his blood. We started him on oxygen. But Thursday morning
he looked good again. He wanted to get rid of those annoying nasal
prongs. This would become a pattern. High temperatures and short-
ness of breath in the evenings—then perking up in the morning to
charm us as we made rounds. He was the definition of resilience. I felt
confident that Billy was going to make it through this infection—and
he did.
Wednesday evening, I had at least four phone calls with the
nurse on duty. He was worried about Helen. She was short of breath
and couldn’t stop coughing. They were struggling to keep her oxygen
saturation near 90%. On top of COVID-19 infection, Helen had heart
failure. She was on a high dose of diuretics. Neither she nor her fam-
ily wanted her to go to the hospital. She hated hospitals. The family
wanted her kept comfortable. I decided to prescribe hydromorphone
to help the laboured breathing and settle the agitation. But I discov-
ered there were no narcotics on site. It was almost midnight. We opted
to try lorazepam to settle her. I reviewed what I would need to do if
Helen died in the home. I slept lightly, worried I would be heading
back to PHM at some point in the night to pronounce a death. To
my surprise and relief that call never came. Somehow Helen made it
through the night.
Thursday would be the worst day of the first week. I was pull-
ing into the parking lot at PHM when I received a couple of texts from
Jen who was the charge nurse that day: “Helen is on 6L and sats are
84–88%. We don’t have a plan for air hunger. I don’t know that we
have meds for it either.”
Then a minute later: “Can you come see Stuart right away?”
There were two residents with severe shortness of breath. Each
was getting 6 litres per minute of oxygen. We hadn’t yet acquired oxy-
gen concentrators, so we were using small mobile tanks. Jen calcu-
lated, at that rate, each of them would use a tank an hour. I walked
into the building, ready to kick into action, determined to procure
medications to help with the agitation and shortness of breath.
I went directly to the purple pod where Nurse Jen was watch-
ing over Stuart. I donned personal protective gear and went in. I’d
been checking Stuart every day. He sat in his wheelchair, coughing
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Title
- VULNERABLE
- Subtitle
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Authors
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Publisher
- Ottawa Press
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Size
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Pages
- 648
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- International