GREENWOOD, SC (AP) – “I am exhausted, I am tired. I don’t even know how I’m still standing. “
Dr. Jeffrey Albores was impressed by the continuing challenge of treating patients in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. He has been at the Self Regional Medical Center since 2015, but recently logged on to Facebook to share his exhaustion after a two-week shift in an ICU full of COVID-19 patients.
“We are four ICU doctors, where we alternate one week at a time between the four,” said Albores. “With the current increase, we are back to having a primary and reserve ICU doctor, just to handle the initial number of patients.”
The first few cases of COVID-19 started to appear in the spring of 2020, when they would have two or three patients at a time being treated in a 20-bed ICU. In July and the following months, the ICU was regularly filled with patients with COVID. Self expanded its ICU in July, adding additional beds on the second floor of the patient tower, but the team was already identifying locations where more ICU patients could be accommodated.
“This was the first increase and after that, in October, November, December, the numbers started to drop,” said Albores. “Now, after Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are feeling the wave again.”
At the end of December, Self had to further expand its COVID patient wing to accommodate the post-holiday increase. January proved to be the worst month for Greenwood County in terms of confirmed COVID cases.
Albores recently ended up working two consecutive week-long shifts, with many days extending beyond 12 o’clock. He and the other doctors and medical staff tour more than 20 patients, looking after COVID and non-COVID patients in the same way and often having to provide sudden assistance to patients admitted from other departments.
People’s hearts stop and demand CPR, while others struggle to breathe and need to be placed on ventilators.
“We are pulled in all directions to deal with acute situations like these,” he said. “It is physically, mentally and emotionally tiring. Physically, you stay there seven days and, in my case, 14 days. Emotionally, because of the deaths and the bad things that happen. And mentally, as an ICU doctor, you have to come in and meet these patients, because one wrong move and some of them may technically die ”.
He said there is no doubt that we are still in a second wave of cases, and the flow of people after the holidays was weighing on all doctors and staff. Frontline workers need to keep pushing, however, and looking at each victory as the reason to keep going.
“Now, unlike the first outbreak, we have something to look forward to, because we have the vaccine,” he said. “There is light at the end of the tunnel and we have hope.”
The initial supply of vaccines did not meet the growing demand, and Albores said that everyone is needed to do their part to help prevent continued spread while people are vaccinated. He said people need to continue taking the pandemic seriously and wearing masks, practicing social detachment and staying at home when possible. When the time comes, he said he expects everyone to take the initiative and get the vaccine when it becomes available.
“Health professionals are very tired; day after day, it seems that nothing has really changed. It is not sustainable, ”he said. “People really should do their part.”