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It’s a struggle for Joe Gammon to speak. Lying in his bed in the intensive care unit at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, this month he described himself as “naive.”
“If I had known six months ago that this was possible, it would have been obvious,” said the father of six, 45, who has been in critical condition with COVID-19 for weeks. He paused to use a suction tube to dislodge phlegm from his throat. “But honestly, I didn’t think I was in danger.”
Hospitals in Tennessee are setting new records every day, treating more COVID patients than ever before, including 3,846 of the more than 100,000 Americans hospitalized with the virus as of September 9. The most critical patients are almost all unvaccinated, according to hospital officials, which means intensive care units. are filled with regrettable patients who are hoping for a second chance.
In southern hospitals as well as parts of California and Oregon, 20% to more than 50% of hospital patients are being treated for COVID, according to an NPR analysis.
Gammon is a truck driver in rural Lascassas, middle Tennessee, who said he listens to a lot of conservative radios. Daily rants downplaying the pandemic and advocating personal freedom were enough to deter him from getting the vaccine.
Gammon said he was not an “anti-vaccine”. And he said he strongly believes in the COVID vaccine now. He’s also grateful that he hasn’t made anyone else so sick that he’s in an intensive care unit like him.
“Before you say no, get a second opinion,” he advised people who think like he did before being hospitalized. “Just saying ‘no’ is irresponsible. Because it might not necessarily affect you. What if it affects your spouse? Or your child? You wouldn’t want that. You sure wouldn’t want that on your heart.
Gammon’s lungs are too damaged by COVID for a ventilator. It is on the ECMO last resort life support, which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Unlike previous generations of resuscitation, people on ECMO can be fully conscious, can talk to loved ones (or even reporters), and can even get around with the help of a team of nurses and technicians.
But it’s an intense treatment, with a machine that does the work of both the heart and the lungs. Thick tubes come out of a hole in Gammon’s neck and pump all of his blood through the ECMO machine to be oxygenated, then back into his body through other tubes. A mask on his nose forces air into his lungs because they have time to heal.
Even for patients who survive ECMO, many face months of rehabilitation or even permanent disability or dependence on oxygen.
This Saint Thomas West intensive care unit only treats COVID patients, and that data point should be convincing enough for people who are resistant to vaccines, ICU nurse Angie Gicewicz said.
“We don’t have people in the hospital who have horrible reactions to the vaccine,” she noted.
If all of the patients in that room could speak – and some can’t because they are sedated on ventilators – Gicewicz said they would tell people to learn from their mistakes. She told the story of an elderly woman who was admitted in recent weeks and spent her days in isolation to control the infection.
Gicewicz said she would wave nurses to her sealed room, desperate to find someone to talk to. “The first day I took care of her she said, ‘I guess I should have taken this vaccine.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah honey, probably. But we are where we are now, and doing what we can for you. “
This woman, like so many others who did not take the vaccine, never recovered, Gicewicz said. She died at this hospital, which recorded on average more than one death from COVID each day during the month of August.
This story is part of a partnership that includes Nashville Public Radio, NPR and KHN.
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