ROUEN, France (AP) – Slowly drowned in a French intensive care unit, Patrick Aricique feared dying from sick lungs that felt “completely burned from the inside, burned like the cathedral of Paris,” while doctors worked and the tired nurses. and at night to keep alive patients seriously ill with COVID-19 like him.
A married couple from the same ICU died within hours of life as Aricique, feeling as fragile as “a soap bubble ready to explode,” also fought the coronavirus. The 67-year-old retired building contractor credits a divine hand for his survival. “I saw archangels, I saw little cherubs,” he said. “It was like communicating with the afterlife.”
At his side were French medical professionals who, forged in the bitter experiences of previous waves of infection, now fight relentlessly to keep patients awake and out of mechanical ventilators, if possible. They treated Aricique with nasal tubes and a mask that bathed her raised lungs in a constant flow of oxygen. This saved him the discomfort of a thick ventilation tube at the bottom of his throat and a strong sedation from which patients often fear, at times, rightly, that they will never wake up.
Although mechanical ventilation is inevitable for some patients, it is now a less systematic step than at the beginning of the pandemic. Dr. Philippe Gouin, who heads the ICU ward where Aricique underwent severe COVID-19 treatment, said: “We know that every tube we introduce will bring its share of complications, length of stay. and sometimes morbidity. “
Between 15% and 20% of his intubated patients do not survive, he said.
“It’s a milestone that weighs on survival,” Gouin said. “We know we’re going to lose a number of patients that we can’t help negotiate this corner.”
The shift to less invasive respiratory treatments is also helping French ICUs prevent collapse under a renewed concentration of coronavirus cases. Overloaded by a more contagious virus variant that devastated neighboring Britain for the first time, the third wave of infection in France has caused the number of deaths related to COVID-19 in the country to exceed 100,000 people. Hospitals across the country are once again facing the macabre math of making room for thousands of patients with serious illnesses.
“We have a continuous flow of cases,” said Dr. Philippe Montravers, head of the ICU at Bichat Hospital in Paris, who is once again wrapping patients in makeshift critical care units. “Each of these cases are absolutely terrible stories: for the families, for the patients themselves, of course, for the responsible doctors, for the nurses.”
Sedated patients kept alive with mechanical ventilation often occupy ICU beds for several weeks, even months, and the physical and mental trauma of their tests can take months to heal. But 13 days after being admitted to the ICU in the city of Rouen, the cathedral of Normandy, Aricique recovered enough for another critically ill person to replace him.
A non-invasive nasal ventilation system that distributed thousands of gallons (hundreds of gallons) of oxygen that sustained life every hour managed to make him suffer the worst of his infection, until he was well enough to reduce the flow to a drip and stand up straight. , his New Testament bible next to him. Entering a small lunch of tortilla and red cabbage to begin rebuilding his strength, Aricique said he felt resurrected. A nurse freed him from drips that had been plugged into his arms, packing the tubes as entrails.
Dorothee Carpentier, doing rounds with junior doctors and nurses in the trailer, allowed herself a mini-celebration as she passed in front of Arique’s room, after declaring her fit for discharge. The patient in the adjoining room could also leave, she decided. He described the impending departures as “small victories” for the full 20-bed room, a temporary facility that was once a surgical unit and is now fully converted for care at C0VID-19.
“I imagine they’ll be refilled in the morning,” Carpentier said of the two unoccupied beds. “The most difficult thing about this third wave is that there is no stop button. We don’t know when it will start to slow down. ”
Further down the hall, a 69-year-old woman lying face down in her stomach struggled to breathe with an oxygen mask and dangerously approached the point where doctors decided to anesthetize and intubate her. the. Nurse Gregory Bombard recruited the woman’s visiting daughter-in-law to try to avoid the next step, impressing her with the importance of keeping the mask.
“Morale is so important and it has to turn that corner,” Bombard said. “We do what we can. They must also strive to win, otherwise they will lose.
“Do what you can,” the nurse told the daughter-in-law.
The relative later left the patient’s room with foggy and shaken eyes.
“It’s very hard to see it that way,” he said. “He lets go.”
In another room, Gouin gently pleaded with a 55-year-old operator who complained that his oxygen mask made him feel claustrophobic.
“You have to play the game,” the doctor insisted. “My goal is that we don’t get to the point where we have to sleep on you.”
The patient agreed. “I don’t want to be intubated, be in a coma, not knowing when you will wake up,” he said.
Intubations can be traumatic for everyone involved. A patient who cried when he was put to sleep remained sedated in the ICU almost two weeks later.
“He looked terrified,” Bombard recalled. “It was horrible.”
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