I've just 'talked' on WhatsApp to my daughter's friend who is 30 today, she should be in Paris on a romantic break & I'd have been looking after her little boy with my girlie while our husbands were doing a 48 hour charity bikeathon. Anyhoo, she's at home, made to resemble Paris by her man & she's having a weekend rest away from being a high dependency nurse in a Birmingham hospital. I didn't want to spend HER day talking about THIS virus, however, she did tell me a few things & most of them are positive. Obviously this only relates to her unit in her hospital:
The situation isn't getting any worse & they're not just coping, they're working hard but well.
People are being admitted, being stabilised, improving fairly quickly & going home.
She saw a 'cluster', her word, of women in their upper 70s & 80s who were admitted because husbands were concerned about their breathing. It seemed that they were ill & the men had sent them to bed where lying down made them worse, with oxygen & calm care they also improved & went home.
The team work has been amazing & she said that the 'us & them' culture between doctors & nurses has all but disappeared - interesting.
Older people who are slim & active do really well, usually because they listen to advice!
The negative was about patients younger than 65 where the one factor that hindered their recovery was their weight. She's used to logrolling patients who have spinal injuries & the technique is now being used to turn patients who are on oxygen. Normally it takes three people to turn a heavier patient, they are now needing five & it's not because of the PPE, it's because so many are obese. A senior cardiologist who was on shift with her said how despondent he was because people just don't look after their health & then expect a magic pill. He said it was like looking at a room full of sumo wrestlers.
She sounded fine & repeated what she said to me a couple of weeks ago, that this is why she became a nurse - to help at the worst time in a person's life & also to ignore the media, especially when an expert is having 15 minutes of fame.
