Fastforward
I went to bed at the usual 20:00 and woke up at 05:00 to a text from the afterhours manager sent at 21:00 saying the 2nd covid test was neg and he was deemed low risk, and therefore I could go to work that morning.
-- So at 07:00 I went to work, thinking I'd need to wear N94 instead of surgical but be placed in a regular ward (be it CICU or.... small ICU) only to find out the whole place was wearing N94 whilst they figured out what was going on. neuroICU was closed and considered locked and covid while they sorted everyone out. And I was in CICU for the day.
I had 2 pt but they were wonderful. A youngish man, 40s, obese, Ex wardie (or as he said "its called runner over there-- linked to its war time history) from our district's level 4? hospital with a congenital cardiac condition. + a 70 yr old who had ?barotrauma which now cause hypotension postoperative her usually-go-to-the-ward-for-one-night stent procedure which landed her in ICU on metaraminol which was now weaned overnight and was wardable, who gently pointed to my middle and asked if "a bub was in there".
non-covid ICU remained shut.
Then I had the weekend off. [one of the last few weekends I'll have off for a good while].
On the Monday, I bumped into my boss in the hallway who similarly didn't know where we were going (and when i went to small ICU i was promptly informed that it should be listed down in non-covid ICU and what was I doing in small ICU? -- when it wasn't. boss was like "just wander around and if you can't find your name somewhere phone AHNUM"... as i suspected would be the case) - and i wandered into CICU and found my name there with a pretty interesting double again.
(not that I minded)
> Asthma, went to our districts level 3 hospital and had a "missed MI" that turned out to be takotsubo's cardiomyopathy but stressed induced after the emergency angio they wanted to do.
If she ever got covid she'd be fucked.
She kept a bible next to her on the bed incase she "wanted to read it" she wouldn't need to bother me for it out of her bag.
I cleaned the sand and rubish from her handbag whilst we put them into the computer system just because, it drove me nuts thinking about the sand in there.
>2nd liver transplant man who just looked like death warmed over
+ an overwhelmed AIN who was underwhelmingly unhelpful.
The day ended with me handing those two over to take an ex-covid on CRRT late 40s gentleman now with covid pneumonitis which looked like death, GCS 10, barely moves, trachy, decannulated off ecmo 2 days prior, and now just .... weak. Normal tidal volumes actually. Past Hx. obesity (but he didn't look it anymore).
My old 70 yr old from the countryside was nowhere to be seen
and Mr 40 yr old with congenital cardiac issues was still there and getting mighty tired of being there too. He argued with staff, was a bit "yeah yeah I know" about a lot of it. I waved to him and said hello and asked him why he was still there- and after about argument 3 he turned to me when I was wandering past - and trying to hand something over to his RN and said "you know me, I'm a good person right" and I just validated that he'd had a rough trot and not to worry about having a once off bad day of being stuck with us lot down in the ICU dungeon with no windows, being fluid restricted etc.
By the end of this day, non-covid ICU was now reopened and I figured that's where I'd be for shift 3 of the week -
I didn't figure I'd be in charge though .. but with the number of staff furloughed I suppose it was to be expected.