Desperate and helpless, doctor Marc Fonseca Barbosa chose to treat his mother, who was seriously ill with coronavirus, at home. The wait to be hospitalized in Manaus, in northern Brazil, was endless: “I was afraid he would die in my arms,” he confesses.
As an emergency physician, Marc, 36, tried to be admitted to intensive care last week, but the August 28 public hospital was completely saturated with the constant hospitalization of new patients, in a city where the number of covid -19 infections rose exponentially earlier this year.
Her mother, Ruth, 56, “was feverish, having a bad time. I presented myself as a doctor, but they left us waiting for four hours, sitting in plastic chairs,” she told AFP.
“I can’t blame my colleagues, because it’s a war zone,” admits this doctor who works at several private clinics, also saturated by the pandemic.
With a population of 2 million, Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian Amazon, already experienced horror scenes in April and May, with mass graves dug in public cemeteries and refrigerated trucks installed outside hospitals to preserve the bodies of the dead.
But the situation is worse since the beginning of the year: between January 1 and 11, 1,979 new hospitalizations were registered due to the coronavirus, compared to 2,128 in April 2020, the most complicated month since the arrival of the pandemic.
Funeral deaths for covid-19 also break records: in the first ten days of 2021, 379 were recorded, more than the 348 in May.
Improvise the house
“I would never have imagined a situation like this, not even in my worst nightmares,” Marc recounts.
When he realized that his mother could die from lack of bed in intensive care, he took the reins of the situation.
“It was desperate. I was afraid my mother would die in my arms, in a plastic chair. In a rush, I took her by the arm, put her in the car, and went home.”
“I called all my friends and former patients whom I had treated at home to ask for help,” he explains.
So he got an oxygen tank and a non-invasive mechanical ventilator, which he installed around a makeshift hospital bed in his own room.
Ruth “had to be intubated,” but in these circumstances her son sought alternatives: “I kept her alive with a nebulizer” and a nasal catheter to facilitate her breathing, she explains.
“It was four days without me moving away from his side, so it’s distressing to take my guards back to the hospital.” He is now cared for by his wife, who is a teacher.
“Luckily it’s better, but it doesn’t stop me from calling non-stop for news.”
Without wanting to take away the merit of having saved her, Marcos thinks that what really helped his mother was “his will to live and the divine work”
“It’s a real miracle that she’s still alive.”