According to the Associated Press, as the increase in COVID-19 cases has caused facilities to strain, Louisiana hospitals have begun to reject heart and stroke patients and other life-threatening emergencies.
The state has become an infection hotspot, and the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized last week reached a record level. In Louisiana hospitals, nearly 2,900 people are currently patients with the virus because the facility has suspended care for elective surgery and other non-life-threatening problems. Slightly more than 37% of state residents have been vaccinated against COVID-19, the fourth lowest rate in the country.
“We are working hard to provide the most consistent care we can provide, but to do this, we need more staff,” said neurologist Robin Davis.
Davis worked at the Ochsner Medical Center in Jefferson, outside of New Orleans, and she went to the facility to help during her vacation.
“For our nurses, one of the biggest problems is that the number of patients is so large that we have to create beds that didn’t exist before. We have to find providers that didn’t exist before.”
For more reports from the Associated Press, please see below.
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Before the recent surge in COVID-19, Davis focused on her specialty: treating patients with epilepsy. These days, as the virus patients poured into her hospital in record numbers, she assumed additional nurse, janitor, and orderly duties.
“On Sunday I took a shower in bed, emptied the trash can, changed the sheets, and pushed the patient for an MRI examination,” said Davis, who has been providing some relief to the overworked nurses at Oxner Medical Center on his days off.
The number of COVID-19 infections has risen rapidly across the United States, once again overwhelming hospitals, especially in Louisiana. State health officials said the number of cases may not continue to peak for a few more weeks.
On a recent day in Oxner, healthcare providers rushed back and forth in the hall, putting on and taking off protective clothing every time they entered a new area of the building. In dozens of rooms in the ICU, patients were pale and motionless, with a tube in their throat, as the beeping machine pumped medicine into their system, and the ventilator forced air into their weak lungs. Health care contractors brought in from other hospitals quickly became familiar with the new environment when they rushed to ease the overburdened staff.
Ochsner Health is the largest healthcare provider in Louisiana, with 40 medical institutions across the state. More than 1,000 people (approximately 40% of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in the state) are being treated in Ochsner’s facility. About 200 of them are in Jefferson’s main campus, and the three-story building of the hospital’s west tower has been built as a care room for COVID-19 patients.
The resources of the state have been stretched to the limit.
Davis said that she needed her help most than the sparsely populated nursing department of Ochsner. She pointed out that many of her recent duties include pulling drugs and pushing patients in wheelchairs.
“If it relieves the pressure on the nurse, if it gives her time to do what she needs to do, that’s what we did,” she said. “Week in Japan should be a day for me to rest with the children, but we need help here. One day I hope I can tell these two little boys that I did what I needed to do when I needed it.”
In the intensive care unit of Ochsner Medical Center, nurses Joan Blizzard and Arthur Bienvenu try to take care of each other with their COVID-19 patients.
They tied each other’s robes together without saying a word, prepared medicines and machines, and went in and out of the ward. Their eyes were the only faces that could be seen through the protective gear.
Bienvenu said that in the past year and a half, working 50 to 60 hours a week to take care of patients and being surrounded by colleagues has helped him cope with the loss of his father due to the virus last year.
He said he shared his father’s story with other grieving families, including how his father used the ventilator for more than 20 days in the spring, and how his family made the difficult decision to get him off the ventilator.
“The result will not be what he wants,” Bienvenu said. “He didn’t want to tolerate the trachea and PEG (feeding tube) and the severity of the situation, so we decided to transition from gradual measures to comfort, and the little dignity and respect that my father left behind, and we kept that.”
Bienvenu says that working with other families who have suffered losses helped him set goals during the most tragic period of his life.
“People will ask me,’Why are you still coming in?'” he said. “Because these people need us, do you know? We have to stop this. Everyone has a different path. I am lucky to be with people around me. This is the only way I am here.”
Intensive care nurse Mary Lubrano watched her colleague running around in the corridors of the intensive care unit at Ochsner Medical Center, while she was lying in a hospital bed with the virus. She has been hospitalized for two weeks and counted, due to lack of oxygen, she has difficulty breathing.
“That’s me,” she said of the other nurses, her voice choked with excitement. “And I hope to help them.”
Lubrano works in the intensive care unit of St. Bernard Parish Hospital, an institution run by Ochsner, close to her home in Chalmette, where she was initially hospitalized and then transferred to the Jefferson campus.
She said she still checks emails as often as possible to see how her nurse colleagues in Chalmette are doing.
“They were making a lot of noise there, it was crowded with COVID-19 patients, and they were arranging the same nurses every day. They just came and went,” she said. “As a nurse, everything is for giving back, so I can’t wait to get back there.”
Blizzard said that the scale of this recent COVID-19 surge—mainly caused by the highly contagious delta variant—has far-reaching implications.
“People got sick so fast this time,” she said. “They will talk to you, and within a few hours, we will have many people at the bedside” to perform emergency procedures. “too terrifying.”
She said that if they survive, many people will suffer years of damage.
Bienvenu wants people to understand the seriousness of the current situation.
“It hits us all differently,” he said. “Yes, one person can cough or sneeze, but another person can use a ventilator.”
Jerome Batiste, a 26-year-old New Orleans resident, said he rarely gets sick, so he doesn’t think there is a need for a COVID-19 vaccine. He said that he believes he has a strong immune system and has not been infected throughout the pandemic.
When he was sitting by the window of the recovery room in one of Ochsner’s COVID wards, basking in the sun from the bench near the bed, he said that he not only hoped that he was vaccinated, but that everyone he knew would be vaccinated. If they need someone to accompany me, I will go.”
Baptiste is not sure where he contracted the virus, but said he has been on a family trip Disney World also visited friends a few weeks before the illness.
“It just happened,” he said. “It appeared suddenly. I started to cough a lot.”
He said he took over-the-counter cough medicine and hoped it would pass, but “it got worse and worse. I started to vomit a lot and I couldn’t suppress anything.”
Since being admitted to the hospital last week, he has been taking vitamins, steroids, respiratory therapy and injections to prevent blood clots. He also suffered from a rare disease, the body’s muscle tissue began to decompose, and the kidneys need to be flushed to prevent further disease.
Baptiste said he told his family and friends not to “feel comfortable” in the face of the virus and to protect themselves through injections.
“I just didn’t take this matter as seriously as most young people,” he said, his right forearm sticking out of a port with a medicine tube. “It is never too safe to get vaccinated.”
Lubrano, an intensive care nurse who is now suffering from COVID-19, said she was not hospitalized until this year. She said that she originally planned to get the vaccine, but was diagnosed with breast cancer in February, and then had surgery and radiation therapy to eradicate it, which delayed her vaccination.
She said that a relative had a stroke shortly after being vaccinated, and she was also worried that her health would be endangered. She knew that most people had mild side effects, if any, but she was still hesitant. In large-scale research and actual use in tens of millions of people, vaccines authorized for use in the United States have been proven to be safe and effective against serious diseases and deaths.
“I followed up and got vaccinated bravely, but it turned out to be infected with COVID,” Lubrano said, who called this the scariest moment in her life. “You take breathing for granted… When you sit down, your lungs cannot take in air… This is terrible, and I don’t want anyone to feel that way.”
Lubrano said that her husband was ill and she was isolated at home during the hospitalization. She said that since then he has been released, is recovering at home, and is still taking oxygen.
Since being hospitalized, Lubrano’s entire family—her daughter, sisters, and their spouse—have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“My mission is to make sure that no one suffers this kind of pain,” she said, with an oxygen tube hanging from her nose. “Everyone needs to be vaccinated. We will never defeat it in any other way.”
Davis, a neurologist who was forced to take on additional responsibilities during the recent COVID-19 surge, said she couldn’t emphasize the importance of vaccination too much. She recalled a year ago-before the vaccine came out-she watched helplessly as friends and neighbors die.
“They are people who have no chance,” she said. “We have no way to stop them. You have a chance now. You have something that gives you a chance to have a different destiny than them. Please don’t waste it.”
Stacy Pleasance/Associated Press Photo
