!Third covid winter
---
agk's diary
7 December 2021 @ 00:28
---
written on Pinebook Pro
while Evy and the baby are at the library
---
Loretta puked in the trashcan in the smoker's shack
outside the staff entrance. 24 years old in black
scrubs, ID badge clipped to collar, hair in two plaits
dyed grey. I pulled my mask off to emote. "You ok?"
"Oh, I'm fine, Anna," she said. She lurched over the
trashcan again. "I've gotten good at just throwing up
and popping back into work. It's actually no big."
"You pregnant?"
Kneeling on the concrete with the trashcan, she looked
up. "No---GOD, no! (laugh) I--it's just, ever since I
got COVID in September I've had this digestive thing.
They've done a lot of tests, maybe it's IBS or some-
thing, but---it's honestly no big deal. I just run out
here like six times a shift to puke or whatever. It
doesn't hurt or anything."
- - -
The 19-year old was rail thin---still fashionably
underweight, not skeletal yet. Consumed with anxiety,
her nose and mouth were capped with the highest-flow
Venturi oxygen mask. The head of her hospital bed was
raised 30°. Her mom woke in the recliner.
I only heard breath sounds in the upper part of her
upper lobes. She was frail. Her and her mom were
pushing her to the top of her class in a fashion
design major and leadership positions in multiple
student clubs when she collapsed. She wasn't moving
much, so antibiotics or no, her pneumonia wasn't
going anywhere.
I sat her up with another nurse (a registered one),
took off her mask, and instructed her to inhale
through her incentive spirometer. She couldn't hold
her breath for ten seconds, only 2 or 3. She couldn't
inhale in a controlled way, just little gulps. She
was embarrassed, out-of-breath apologetic, scared.
Her lung capacity seemed the volume of a grapefruit
or less. She couldn't do ten reps. We stopped after
three. In under a minute of her mask being off her O2
sats had dropped into the 70s.
The respiratory therapist switched her to high-flow
oxygen. She had three negative COVID rapid tests. The
RT ordered a PCR test. Her mom explained to anyone
who would listen they didn't get vaccinated for
religious reasons. The X-ray showed "ground glass"
lungs and nipple barbells. The RT, in the nurse's
station, laughed angrily, indicated the radio-opaque
piercings. "I guess she didn't have a religious
exception to *these*."
The cat scan showed lungs without airspaces. Her
condition steadily, rapidly declined under her over-
bearing mother's suffocating gaze. "No wonder she
can't breathe," I said. The girl wasn't a progress-
ive case anymore. We prepped to send her to the ICU.
A resident ordered COVID precautions (N95 etc) going
forward, just in case.
My shift ended. She was still on our floor. I guess
they were prepping a negative pressure room for
her? I've never worked in the ICU. I don't know how
it works.
- - -
"Numbers are up," I tell Evy.
"That checks out," she says. "We have five in over-
flow again."
