“The lungs crumbled like sand.” What is happening inside the hospital
- Diana Kuryshko
- BBC News Ukraine
“The young man actually had no lungs. They crumbled in his hands like sand,” said Natalia Matolinets, head of intensive care at Lviv ambulance doctors.
Doctors now see many such deaths.
On November 11, this hospital had 450 units with a code. 56 people were brought in a day. Of these, 14 were immediately admitted to the intensive care unit.
Up to 100 people came in the most important days, doctors say. It’s a little easier now, there are fewer people.
But that the doctors of this hospital do not go to the families to report the death.
Natalia Matolinets worked during all three minutes.
Here is her story to BBC News Ukraine about what is happening inside the hospital and how doctors cope with it.
Young people are burning
Recently, among the brought less, but they are increasing part of the “heavy”. There are more and more people in need of artificial lung ventilation, people in serious condition.
Earlier in our resuscitation there were 50 places. But that was not enough. Now we have expanded to a hundred.
It is frightening that young people are getting sick more and more often. During the previous waves, we did not have any deaths from human coronavirus under the age of 40. If such deaths occurred, then these people had some concomitant serious illnesses.
Now young people without any concomitant diseases get sick and die. Delta is a very aggressive strain.
Unfortunately, young people usually do not give their health, do not seek medical attention in time.
When they are with us, their condition is already extremely serious, pronounced respiratory capacity. They are exhausted by prolonged intoxication, prolonged fever.
It is difficult for them to help.
In these cases, it is easy to carry young people in the world. 80% of cases recover. But still young people need to follow certain recommendations during illness – drink more water to breathe fresh air, be supervised.
Unfortunately, this Delta wave looks a little different. Young people, children and pregnant women get sick more and more severely.
A young man died in our intensive care unit. This is a tragedy, because he was healthy and without any problems, but Delta-strain in various aggressive and “burned” his lungs.
Doctors fought for his life for a long time. They did everything they could, but he did not survive.
I was at the autopsy – it’s a terrible picture. His lungs turned black, crumbling in his hands like sand. The young man actually had no lungs. Here’s what the code does to the body.
“Pregnant women in serious condition”
Also, many pregnant women are now in serious condition. There were four pregnant patients last week.
One – at 13 weeks of pregnancy. They have already been removed from non-invasive lung ventilation and transferred from intensive care. She is recovering. The second – at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Still in intensive care, but has a positive trend.
The third pregnant woman has 60% of severe lung disease and illness.
The worst case was when a 23-year-old pregnant woman died a few days ago. No comorbidities, but little severe obesity. Unfortunately, I went to the hospital very late. She was breathing hard, unconscious. She was gone in a week.
The autopsy showed that the woman had black non-viable lungs.
“These people can be saved”
It is difficult to impress us doctors, but what is happening now is simply unbearable. We do not have a single vaccinated person in the intensive care unit. And all these people could be saved.
From time to time we meet people with those two doses, but not often because of the code, but because of the exacerbation of their diseases.
There were several fake certificates. Even when the condition became critical, the man admitted that there was no vaccination.
Three to ten people die from patients in a day in the Lviv ambulance hospital.
A total of 14 people were admitted to the intensive care unit last week. Only eight survived the great achievement. Imagine the dire condition they brought.
We have to go out to relatives every day to report the death. This is one of the most important moments in the work of doctors.
Sometimes, when I talk to my family, the question comes to my mind: “Why didn’t you defend yourself, why didn’t you get vaccinated, why didn’t you use that chance?” But people who have lost a loved one do not want to hear it.
A young woman, a mother of three, died a few weeks ago. Unvaccinated. It’s a pity for all these people.
There was also a terrible story when three people in one family died in a few days – two brothers and an uncle. They were very aggressive anti-vaccines, did not believe in covid or medicine.
How to withstand all this?
The most difficult thing in our work now is probably people of solidarity with each other. It would be easier for us if we saw understanding in people’s eyes. That we are trusted and ready to help.
On the weekends I rode public transport. I passed one stop and got out. I couldn’t listen to it. From such conversations hands simply fall.
People don’t believe in covid, they don’t trust doctors, they say that we speculate that we drink coffee instead of healing. We urge our children to try the vaccine and let the children of doctors be born mutants. It is impossible to listen to these horrors. This is the hardest.
We doctors are used to hard work, we have not seen that. We work with road accidents, strokes, heart attacks, sepsis, my all the time in a difficult psychological state, but we have never had such a misunderstanding.
You have such a huge number dying in your arms, and there was a chance to save each of them if they were vaccinated and quarantined.
And we take strength from history with a happy ending – last year we saved a mother of many children, the wife of a priest. She was pregnant and had 100% lungs. It was a great joy for all of us when she returned home to the children.
You can also save a young man who came from workers and fell ill. He was brought unconscious. He had a total lung and then had a stroke. In a few weeks of hard struggle, it can be changed for life.
Now he comes to visit us from time to time, guides and inspires.
Ukraine is at the peak of the third wave of coronavirus. And although the number of new cases and hospitals has stopped growing and the number of discharges is increasing, the death rate from injuries continues to be a record.
In the past week, 833 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded in one day. Since the beginning of the pandemic, almost 75,000 people have fallen victim to the disease. But, according to forecasts, this figure may soon reach 100 thousand.
91% of those hospitalized with Covid-19 last week were unvaccinated. However, the pace of vaccination in Ukraine now at the historical maximum – 250-300 thousand thousand every day. More than 8 million people have been completely vaccinated against covid.
there is very little to achieve collective immunity. Hospitals in many areas are still overcrowded. Most regions of Ukraine are in the red zone with strict quarantine restrictions.
More than 56% of Ukrainians surveyed by sociologists in August do not intend to be vaccinated against coronavirus.