I was honored to be asked to write an essay that was included in the new anthology –Voices from the Front Line: The Pandemic and the Humanities edited by by Katherine Ratzan Peeler and Richard M. Ratzan and published the University of California Health Humanities Press. Here is the description of the book from Amazon: What are the limits of…
They say the omicron wave is past its peak here in Connecticut. The infection rate is declining as are dailey cases. Even wastewater measurements seem to say the wave is receding. While we didn’t have the deaths we saw with the first wave (thank you vaccines), our hospital had record numbers of admitted hospitalized patients…
The patient has a fever, headache and cough. He can’t smell anything and he can’t taste his food. He feels too short of breath to even get out of his chair. He sits there with his hand over his eyes as if not seeing might make how sick he feels go away. His sister says…
Our ED has seen record volumes of patients in recent weeks, many with COVID. Most of these COVID positive patients recently tested positive, and not feeling well with minor shortness of breath fever or body aches, come to the ED where they are evaluated and sent home. Our in hospital COVID admissions are only 50%…
Through my plastic face shield, fogged up by my N95, my too small gown tied around my waist and neck, I stand at the foot of the bed and look at the man. He is sixty years old, eyes fearful, face flushed with fever, his hands tremble with rigors. He mumbles, “What took you so…
Many years ago, a paramedic I know who worked for another company got into a spat with a nurse at a dialysis center. I don’t know the details of the spat. It sounded like nothing more than two people in a bad mood snapping at each other. Nothing that occurred resulted in a suspension or…
As I approach the house with my medic pack over my shoulder and my monitor and isolation bag in my hands, two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, stand on the sidewalk out front of the building, and look at me expectantly. “He’s not alive? Is he? Is he still alive?” the shorter one asks. I…
When I am in the rapid response paramedic fly car, I usually always arrive on scene, before the fire department, before the police, before the ambulance. (Unless, I am requested to stage for a violent psych or an assault if the assailant is still believed to be on scene). I carry with me my paramedic…
This week I received in the mail special glasses I ordered from the back of an old comic book. They enable me to see COVID. He is a tiny little green monster with a coat of suction cups. He is not just one fellow, but an army of millions of little green monsters. I sit…
Friday night in the city on a dead end street. Light beams out of the ambulance’s open back doors. Inside the EMT spreads a clean white sheet on the black stretcher mattress. He hits the exhaust button on the wall, and then exits from the side doors. My masked patient steps up into the back where…
I am on my stomach intubating, staring down the throat of a still warm body, looking at the vocal chords. COVID is invisible, but I imagine him there behind the folds, taunting me, giving me double barreled middle fingers, then unleashing a dragon’s breath torrent of viral load, a hot water cannon of death and…
We are told to keep six feet of distance from each other, but how effective is this the distance in preventing the spread of COVID-19? The answer may well be, yes, it helps, but it is not the full answer. In a new article published in the British medical Journal provides a fuller view of…
He is an old man with a stooped back, wearing tan work pants and shirt with his name on the right breast and his company’s name on the left. He has gotten out of his old Pontiac, and wearing a face mask, walks toward us as we come out of the dialysis center with an…
COVID-19 is spread primarily in respiratory droplets. Here’s why you need to put a surgical mask on your patients and why we should all be wearing masks ourselves when we are in public. These illustrations come from a study by Vapotherm. COVID-19 Transmission Assessment Report
The fire department had three of their men in full gowns when we arrived. The patient was up on the fourth floor, unable to walk, they said. They weren’t certain what was wrong with him — he wasn’t answering questions–but he had been shaking and vomiting all morning, and he had just gotten out of…
A large man stands handcuffed, surrounded by six police officers by the side of the road. Nearby two citizens have their iPhones out recording. The man does not mince his words. “I’m going to kill all of you. I hate cops. I’m going to eat you. You’re gonna be in my belly.” It is clear…
He is naked in the nursing home hallway, rolling over and over. We manage to get a sheet under him and lift him up onto our stretcher. His room air pulse saturation is 74–severely hypoxic. The nurse, who told us he was COVID positive, said he walks around the wing and can hold a normal…
It’s 12:59 A.M. I have given up on sleep. Fortunately tomorrow is my one day off (I will still go into the office to make my COVID EMS notifications) but I will go in at whatever time I feel like and will only stay for a couple hours. It’s not like I have to get…
Pouring rain and violent wind today in Connecticut. It almost blew our hospital tent off the mountain. I am home now and just finishing up making notifications to EMS services about COVID-positive patients. Curiously, for the first time, one of the notifications was for a patient I was involved with as a paramedic. Normally when…
SpongeBob torments me in the night. My daughter bursts into my room . “Daddy what are you shouting? What’s wrong?” “Nothing, I’m fine,” I say. “Go back to bed.” With my wife on isolation is another room, only half the bed should be disturbed, but I have torn off the covers, upended the sheets and…