[ad_1]
“It’s really disheartening to see younger and sicker patients,” said Dr. Mette. “We haven’t seen this degree of disease earlier in the outbreak.”
Young pregnant patients with coronavirus were once rare in the hospital. But recently four or five of them ended up in intensive care. Three were treated with a machine called ECMO – short for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation – a step some see as a last resort after ventilators fail. The machine routes blood from the body to equipment that adds oxygen, then pumps it back into the patient.
Ashton Reed, 25, a coordinator in a county prosecutor’s office, was around 30 weeks pregnant when she arrived at hospital on May 26, gravely ill. To save her life, doctors delivered her baby girl by emergency cesarean, then hooked her up to the ECMO machine.
In a public service announcement later asking for the vaccination, her husband said she went from a sinus problem to resuscitation in 10 days.
“I almost died,” she says. “My thoughts have definitely changed on the vaccine.”
Last month, the hospital had to reopen a coronavirus ward it had closed in late spring. On Monday, he reopened a second.
Many of the nurses there wore colorful stickers announcing that they were vaccinated. Ashley Ayers, 26, a traveling nurse from Dallas, did not. Noting that developing a vaccine typically takes years, she said she was concerned the vaccine could harm her fertility – although there is no evidence of this.
“I just think it was rushed,” she said.
David Deutscher, 49, one of his patients for almost a week, is no longer a holdout. A heating and air conditioning specialist and Air Force veteran, he said he battled Covid for 10 days at home before going to hospital with a 105-degree fever.
[ad_2]
Source link