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The acute care nurse practitioner from Odessa, Texas, reflected on the emotional arc of the coronavirus pandemic, which began with a sense of oneness but turned into exasperation.
“At the start it was ‘Thank you very much you are on the front line, we appreciate what you are doing’,” she said. “And now, I mean, I’m getting threats.
Grieving is often the subject of frustrated phone calls from family members of patients who are not allowed to go to the hospital or who feel they are not doing enough.
“I think it’s sad,” Mourning said. “We’re trying to help, and we’re trying to do the greater good. And I want people to know that.”
It was an astonishing call for courtesy as the spread of Covid-19 continues to worsen.
‘Break the seams’
As scenes from New York and other major cities dominated the coronavirus narrative earlier this year, the pandemic has now crept into small communities in Texas, overwhelming hospitals in even the most unexpected places – fields sparsely populated oil from West Texas to the desert. -El Paso mountain region.
“There have only been a few times over the summer where we have been really taken to the extreme,” Mourning said, recalling the push from July and August. “But now, for the past few weeks, we’ve been… breaking out of the seams.”
At the Odessa Regional Medical Center, where Mourning works, a once neonatal intensive care unit has turned into a Covid-19 intensive care unit for adults. This week, the hospital is treating 28 patients with Covid-19 on Thursday. But more importantly, the center has maximized its capacity in the intensive care unit and in a separate medical surge area for Covid-19 patients as well. The hospital had to open an “overflow” unit earlier this week in a separate building just to keep pace.
“The only space that is not full at the moment are the hallways,” said Dr Rohith Saravanan, the hospital’s chief medical officer.
“For every patient you see here, there are several more who are positive outside of the hospital who could have used care, but there is no room,” he said. “The most critical people are admitted and the rest are sent home.”
Some of those patients go home with oxygen – something the hospital doesn’t normally do, Saravanan said.
As of Thursday, Odessa’s two hospitals had nearly 130 patients with Covid-19, nearly double the roughly 70 patients hospitalized here at the height of the crisis this summer.
Statewide, hospitalizations have not reached levels this summer, but are increasing steadily in that direction. At one point in late July, nearly 11,000 people were hospitalized for Covid-19 in Texas. That number fell to around 3,000 in September and returns to nearly 8,000 this week.
The United States currently has an average of 72,120 hospitalizations due to Covid-19 in the past seven days, up almost 20% from last week. The metric has never been higher.
Odessa hospitals, Saravanan said, are working with city authorities to request a mobile morgue. And he said there were talks about setting up a tent to treat patients near the airport between Odessa and Midland.
The state sent additional medical personnel to Odessa and helped expand the peak capacity of the hospital. But Saravanan said he was still worried about what was to come.
“We don’t have good control over it,” he said. “It’s definitely something that horrifies us when we think about where this community is heading.”
“The scary word is ‘positive'”
The pandemic is also raising alarm bells in the farming community of Lamesa, Texas, a small town about 80 miles northeast of Odessa. Home to just over 9,000 people, Lamesa is known for its annual Chicken Fried Steak Festival, and its high school sports teams are known as the Golden Tornadoes.
Lamesa has all the charm of a small town in West Texas, but within the walls of her hospital are the same scenes that take place across the country, even on a smaller scale. The Medical Arts Hospital started preparing for one or two Covid-19 patients about a year ago. Now, the 21-bed facility has a full 10-bed unit for patients infected with the virus, which is about half of the building’s total capacity. On Thursday morning, the hospital had to add two more Covid-19 patients in an overflow space.
Dr Anthony Gibson, director of the hospital emergency room, said small communities have the advantage of time. They are experiencing this wave almost a year after the start of the pandemic, so they are benefiting from the treatments and therapies that have already been discovered.
The problem, according to Gibson, is not how to treat patients with Covid-19, but how to treat those with different medical needs.
“Because there are so many (patients with Covid-19), it takes a lot of resources away from the other issues that people have,” he said, citing common concerns like stroke, cardiovascular events and seasonal illnesses. “We are approaching winter, and this is the time of year when hospitals are busy.”
Shelley Barron, music director at her small church in Lamesa, said she started having a fever from performing the bell choir in September. A few days later, she was admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 and double pneumonia. Barron, 70, will spend nearly 10 days in the medical arts and an additional three days in a hospital in Lubbock during two different stays.
Barron called the ordeal an “extremely humiliating” experience. She urges others to take Covid-19 seriously.
“The scary word is ‘positive’,” she said, adding that six people from her choir and music team have tested positive. Overall, his church has seen two deaths. “This stuff is real. It’s scary.”
“We receive patients from everywhere”
Lamesa is about an hour’s drive south of Lubbock, a larger community that has seen an influx of resources from the state to curb an increase in cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks. Overall, the state has sent more than 700 medical personnel to the Texas Panhandle and South Plains area, along with 7.4 million masks, 3.9 million gloves, and over one million gowns. and suits, according to Governor Greg Abbott’s office.
More than 340 kilometers to the west, El Paso is still struggling with a week-long surge, where about 1 in 25 people are infected with the virus. The state has set up tents outside the main hospital and opened a makeshift medical unit at the convention center. The medical examiner’s office is surrounded by mobile morgues, and local inmates are paid to assist with the transfer of bodies.
Wanda Helgesen is the executive director of the Regional Border Advisory Council and helps coordinate resources for the Covid-19 response effort in the El Paso region. She said area hospitals had added 600 beds and transported more than 80 intensive care patients to other communities in Texas.
“Never think that this can’t happen to you,” she said. “Ours came very quickly. We had a very quick recovery, so even though we had planned, I don’t think we expected it to happen that fast.”
This is a situation that health professionals in other communities hope to avoid. Odessa and Midland are two of the largest cities in the vast region of West Texas, and their hospitals welcome Covid-19 patients well beyond their county borders.
“We receive patients from everywhere,” said Dr Saravanan, chief medical officer of the Odessa Regional Medical Center. This includes patients from the Texas-Mexico border and New Mexico.
Mourning, the nurse practitioner, said all she and her colleagues want to do is take care of their community, but they desperately need people to return the favor.
“People are not taking the precautions they need. Yes, we are on the front line here in the hospital, but the real front line is on the streets, in the grocery stores. Wash your hands. Wear your masks. . Stay away, ”she told me. “The little time and effort it takes outside of here is well worth it, because once you’re here … wearing a mask is better than having a tube down your throat.” I promise.
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