A Week in the Trenches with H1N1
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
I’m done with H1N1, but I fear it is not done with me. Last week, rounding at my hospital, I felt like I had been transported back to the days of the plague. Everyone wore masks, and outside each room were signs with warnings like “Droplet precautions!” Carts stood beside each room, filled with masks, gowns, blue gloves, hand sanitizer and plastic stethoscopes. The entry ways of the hospital are manned by “greeters” (ala Walmart!) who don’t allow anyone in under the age of 18, and ask potential visitors about flu like symptoms. Those visitors deemed too young, or with flu symptoms, are sent away and not allowed in the door.
The Emergency Department is over run with those who are sick, or not so sick, with flu. We go to meetings nearly daily on flu updates, and our hospital has a “control center” to deal with flu. I received the H1N1 vaccine via nasal mist, but many of those required to get the shot because of age or having small children have not yet received their vaccine as my hospital has run out of shots.
We are also facing shortages of masks, gloves, gowns and antiseptic wipes. According to the infection control nurse specialist, we are doing too good of a job wiping off surfaces with the wipes–the supply is going too fast. Masks and gloves are part of a “strategic reserve” stock piled and allotted by the government. So is tamiflu, which is more tightly controlled than narcotics at this point. We are short on gowns, because the gowns were automatically loaded on the isolation carts, and so we all started putting them on when we saw them on the carts. “Can’t you read the signs?” Asked one my ID colleagues. Yes, we responded, but which do you believe–the sign that says wear a mask and gloves or the cart fully loaded with gowns?
They removed the gowns. They can’t seem to decide what type of masks we should have: sometimes it is the N95, with special respirators, and now lately, just simple surgical masks.
The ones that seem to get the sickest are the young people–those 20 or 30 somethings. They get sick quick, and end of “tubed and paralyzed” with in hours as one of my more grim colleagues puts it. We wonder when we will run out of ventilators. The good news appears to be that these youngsters get better after spending some quality time on the vent–about 1 or 2 weeks. One of my non-medical friends was shocked–”That’s horrible!” I, on the other hand, was delighted that they lived.
Be careful out there. Wear your mask, use the hand sanitizer, and pray for spring. And boy, do I wish I had bought stock in Purell!