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One recovered and was discharged after a week-long hospital stay. Two patients, including a 41-year-old woman terrified of dying on her own, were sent home for palliative care, which is medical care provided to people with a terminal illness.
The last two patients were a married couple in their 80s who had not been separated for 62 years. They were put into a room together, where the husband watched his wife escape.
“The woman got sicker and sicker and died in the hospital, and her husband had to watch her die, and so he must have seen this fear and grief,” Dr Xie said, wiping away tears. , in an interview Tuesday with CNN’s John Berman and Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.”
“I don’t think you can describe what it feels like as caregivers to have to see this kind of patient suffering. You know, that was me in a day in the hospital. all my colleagues … this in all the hospitals in Minnesota, and I think it’s really hard to understand that weight. “
Comments from Xie, associate director, division of hospital medicine, at the Hennepin County Medical Center, offered heartbreaking testimony to the toll of Covid-19 on patients and the medical workers charged with their care.
In the past seven days, Minnesota has recorded the fifth highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita in the country, behind only the Dakotas, Wyoming and New Mexico, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The wave of new infections has pushed hospitals – and perhaps more importantly, the people who make them go – to the brink.
“I think we’re all really, really scared of what’s going to happen because the hospitals are already full,” she added.
Even victories can turn out to be empty. She spoke of a patient who recovered after a month in the intensive care unit. Medical staff had tried to contact his family while in the hospital to give them updates, but the staff could not reach them, Xie said.
“One day we found out it was because her husband had died from Covid and her daughter had died from Covid, while she was in the hospital,” Xie said. “So how do you tell someone? How do you tell someone that their family is dead?”
In closing, Xie rejected the idea that hospitals are the “front lines” in the fight against Covid-19.
“I can’t stop anyone from catching Covid, all I can do is try to stop Covid from killing you,” she said. “So we are not the front lines. We are the last line of defense, and so what we need is for people to step up, wear masks and walk away from people and just try to protect themselves. and protect everyone. “
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