LOS ANGELES (AP) – California nurses are scared.
It’s Christmas Eve and they’re not home with their families. They are working, always working, fully dressed and worn out.
They are scared of what people are doing or not doing during a coronavirus pandemic that has already killed more than 320,000 nationwide and shows no signs of slowing down.
They are even more terrified of what is to come.
“Every day I look into the eyes of someone struggling to breathe,” said nurse Jenny Carrillo, her voice broken.
Carrillo, a nurse in charge of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, is harassed by the daily counts of patients with COVID-19. Dark shadows surround his eyes.
As of Tuesday evening, the hospital had 147 patients with coronavirus, a Holy Cross record, but a small fraction of the nearly 2 million cases recorded in California since the pandemic began.
About 18,000 people were hospitalized in the state on Tuesday, and models project that the number could exceed 100,000 in a month, unimaginable for medical systems that are already running out of room. More than 23,000 people with COVID-19 have died in California and the figure is only expected to rise.
Dr. Jim Keany, associate director of the emergency department at Mission Hospital in Orange County, Southern California, wonders how much more they can handle.
Hospitals in Southern California treat waves of new patients with COVID-19. (December 23)
“Will we have the resources to take care of our community?” He said.
The first COVID-19 case in California was confirmed on January 25th. It took 292 days to reach a million infections on November 11th.
Just 44 days later, the number closed at 2 million.
On Tuesday, Holy Cross had 147 coronavirus patients through its 377 beds, more than double the record seen at the hospital in the first wave of pandemic earlier this year.
“If you had told us in April that we would have 147 patients?” said Elizabeth Chow, Holy Cross’s critical care executive director and leading nurse. “Never in my wildest dreams.”
And the nightmare is expected to get worse.
Despite pleas from health officials for people to stay home, millions of Americans travel before Christmas and New Year, just as they did last month for Thanksgiving.
Hospitals in California (and elsewhere) have already been pushed to the brink. They have hired additional staff, canceled elective surgeries and set up outdoor tents to treat patients, all to increase capacity before cases hired during Christmas and New Year in the coming weeks appear. .
Holy Cross and Mission Hospital have sprinkled holiday decorations down the hallways: poinsettias placed on countertops, steep miniature trees in patients ’rooms, caricatures of the Grinch scribbled in nursing stations.
But the bright colors don’t distract from the constant cacophony: fans coming out like snow fog, monitors ringing, swirling machines, trying to keep even one more person from adding to the death toll.
Still, there are hopeful moments.
On Monday, Missionary Hospital held a milestone: 100 patients who had been in the intensive care unit of isolation – reserved for the sickest of the sick – have survived and gone home.
At Holy Cross, the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” hits the entire hospital when a COVID-19 patient is discharged.
The new pandemic tradition has happier roots: hospitals often play a lullaby every time a baby is born.
It’s a few seconds of respite, but it’s not enough. For every patient who goes home, more are allowed.
Holy Cross charge nurse Melanie LaMadrid cares for her patients in 12-hour shifts, holding hands with purple gloves.
“It’s all we can do,” he said. “Seeing how they suffer is hard.”
These nurses are not only exhausted, but angry with those people who turn down requests to stay home and stay safe.
“He’s not a selfish person who doesn’t want to wear a mask,” Carrillo said. “I wish they could come down to our unit one day and look at the faces of some of these patients.”
You can be our messengers, Nurse Genyza Dawson tells her patients when – or if – they are discharged. Dawson, who has a scar on his nose from the tight masks, begs them to spread.
“Now you know what it’s like,” he tells them. “You were one of the lucky ones.”