Yesterday was a long day in the medical center. It started with fun, enjoyable cases at the surgery center. I enjoyed the teams very much, as well as the patients.
One patient was a little risky, the charge nurse at pre-op was concerned because if the case didn't go well, there's no beds open at the hospital, and the ER is totally backed up. A past surgery ended up for this patient with a hospital admission.
Everything went well. I ate my lunch late, at two p.m., but I enjoyed it.
I had gone to work in street clothes, changed into scrubs, but the facility and the hospital have different scrubs. I went to the car to drop off my lunch bag and my pants. I had kept my wool tee shirt on underneath for warmth. We have cold weather and now rain this weekend.
When I came to relieve, my heart sank, because there were not one but two GI cases with Covid in a three-case lineup. There is no such thing as a quick Covid case. You need to gown up into the protection, you need to be clear with family about the risks and it's hard to track down family by phone.
Spirit told me to tell myself 'I LOVE doing Covid cases' instead of hating it because to do otherwise would feed the grid of the system that is keeping us from Ascension.
What I'm going to share is what it's like to be human in those parts of the hospital the world cannot see.
They are busy. ICU's a little less. But there's many people in those areas. And some sit at the nurses station. But most people are actively working.
There are little yellow gowns in carts outside of each Covid patient door. You have to put one on and take it off when you leave the room. That creates lots of trash but fortunately the hospital seems to manage it.
The rooms are tiny. Two patients in a room make not much space for the equipment and the teams. The roommate from one of my patients was younger, Asian, watching TV, and looking like he didn't want to be there but he was. There was a quality of having places to go and things to do about him. But truly, in Southern California, there is nothing to do for fun. Absolutely nothing.
We just wake up, go to work if it is permitted, go home, and go to sleep. It's crazy.
The ICU's, the makeshift kind where they took over other parts of the hospital, are surreal. There's no other way to explain it. It's like a brightly lit place where you can see all the patients at once--like six or eight--and they are connected to machines and hovering between life and death, they are totally sedated. There are fecal recovery systems in place (we call them rectal tubes), foley catheters to collect urine...lots of i.v. drips, and the ventilators.
I saw a new one I've never seen before, but it worked. I changed the oxygen level on it. It was very compact and actually smaller than the monitor for the vital signs. If you have ever bought a pie in a box, it's about that size. We have plenty of ventilators. Beds we are having to rent from outside, we are low, and some funky ones come in. But ventilators are good.
There's a new kind that has 'high flow oxygen'. It gives one hundred percent, like a non-rebreather mask does. It's different from the CPAP and BIPAP I've seen elsewhere in the hospital. One of the things I've noticed are pressure marks in skin, deep, dark and red ones, from wearing these devices all the time. My dad had a notch in his nose from his oxygen cannula years ago. It's just something I notice and might as well share.
Then there was the first time I saw a patient who didn't make it being wheeled out of the regular ICU, the non-Covid one. Ours look a little taller than gurneys, and there's a black plastic curtain over the whole area where the body is, so instead of a lump you see the angular lines of the frame that supports the curtain.
People are starting to panic. It's the same kind of panic I used to see in people's eyes at the grocery store when times were bad and nobody could afford anything. It's a panic they try to hide. You have to look for it.
At work, I see a lot of 'dingy' things from people. That ability to focus and do the tasks needed to finish is out the window. I had a patient sitting in the room for fifteen extra minutes, surgery was over, the bed was in the room, and the scrub tech was just taking his time doing his thing, the nurse was doing something on the computer. The surgeon was in a hurry and I was moving things forward and I looked at him like, 'WTF is going on?' He handled it well, he's a young surgeon, and he said, 'Now that everybody understands and knows the patient is ready to leave the room, let's get the patient out of the room'. to avoid the excuses. Afterwards he talked to the charge nurse for the OR, and she relieved the other nurse to do the next case. The surgeon was able to make his appointment on time after the cases.
My neighbors are starting to feel the effects of Covid. Some of Anthony's friends and their families have had it, and they were fine. But some who have relatives with comorbidities and are living in higher risk areas are coming down with it. They said, 'Mom, I didn't feel RIGHT' and got help. My close neighbor said the death rates on the news are getting to her. She does everything to protect her high risk husband but he's very social and needs to go out.
That's where I shared from my heart that it's a balance. Some people being stuck at home is the worst possible thing for their mental health. There's only so much we can do. And Jesus said, in Mark 8:33 more or less, that if you save your life you lose it, and if you lose your life you save it. Worrying keeps you from enjoying the blessings we have in this day!
Which brings us to another point. Quality of life. Many people are asked if they want 'everything done' for their loved one when their loved one is critically ill. Well of course people are going to say yes to that, right? how could anyone say no?
Doctors often say no. For their loved ones. If the lungs are going to make the person handicapped and on oxygen for the rest of their life if they recover, we might choose to let nature take its course for them. And if more than one organ system is out (lungs, kidney), we understand the overwhelming risk to overcome and how rarely the process of multi system organ failure is reversible. At that point we think about the suffering of the loved one, stuck between life and death, connected to all those wires...and we pause to consider the option of letting them go.
We don't think that 'he is a fighter' is a valid data point. It's an emotional one. And in the face of overwhelming disease, we hear family members all the time using that argument when in fact it comes across as a form of denial of the (to us) medically obvious. Our system is set up to allow for this, the pursuit of care when it's not likely to change the outcome. We are fortunate we don't have to ration care and can allow families this bit of 'wiggle room' to help them come to accept the inevitable at their own pace.
I came home so tired. And today we have a meeting on Zoom with the department because some people want to earn all the money in the group. People have to wait for four hours, two hours to do a little case, and the higher ranking person just swoops in and takes it from them. We resist. So the swooper docs are upset. Hence the meeting.
Please note that on my good week, I worked three short days with much less caseload. And on my 'bad week', I'm not working at all. For most in the group, the full time ones, they have two to three days off a week right now due to Covid. We are staffing the Covid intubation call twenty four hours a day, but we don't know our hourly rate and there's no payment plan like, every two weeks, at the end of the month. This Covid is going on much longer than the three weeks the last surge. So that's what I'm going to bring up at the meeting.
Ross told me yesterday morning he wanted me to go out to eat at the end of the day, no questions asked. That's how he supports and guides me. I had a feeling it would be bad, but it was worse than I thought. Four hours for three low paying, high risk Covid cases. I was in that protective gear the whole time.
Here's something else to think about from yet another doctor: https://www.shiftfrequency.com/medical-care-should-reward-good-care/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=medical-care-should-reward-good-care. The way I see it, these changes in healthcare are non-accidental. They are steps in a plan to usher in the NWO, to limit population, and to take away freedoms. Not only is this talk from this doctor important for everyone to hear, know she was arrested shortly afterwards and had to spend a night in jail for speaking the truth. Don't share it on social media. Just let people you love who might be receptive to it, know, by the old fashioned methods.
That's pretty much everything for me.
Ross
I want to say something about the importance of having hope. Not blind hope and faith, but a constant reassurance that everything is going as planned. About our team. We have our faith in you, and we encourage you to have your faith in us.
Take careful note of the shakiness and 'dingy-ness' Carla mentions about people 'not being present' and 'not functioning at their highest capacity for clinical demands'. I want you to extrapolate that one everywhere.
I want you to recall the way you felt when you discovered for yourself the truth behind the secrets that are hidden. That disorientation, that shock.
I want you to put the two together, to layer that discovery on top of today's social stress.
Now you will understand why the private time in meditation will strengthen you, and why YOU are awake and aware, and others aren't. Simon Parkes gave a nice talk to his teams about it, it's an honor and a blessing to be awake in times like this, and to applaud yourself for it. Realize it's not 'their time' to awaken for the others, and it's frustrating that they aren't and you are, but look at it from the perspective that your soul is in a much better place and your hard work at soul growth is paying its benefits for you to see. Better to be awake than asleep.
Especially when the awakening is on the road ahead.
clap! clap!
Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,
Peace,
Ross and Carla
The 'do gooders' <3 (he's chuckling and laughing at his sense of humor)
