GREENWOOD, S.C. (AP) - “I am exhausted, I am tired. I don’t even know how I am still standing up.”
Dr. Jeffrey Albores was overwhelmed by the continuing challenge of treating the sick amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. He’s been with Self Regional Medical Center since 2015, but recently took to Facebook to share his exhaustion after a two-week shift in an ICU filled with COVID-19 patients.
“There’s four of us ICU doctors, where we rotate one week at a time out of the four,” Albores said. “With the current surge, we’re back to having a primary and backup ICU doctor, just to handle the initial number of patients.”
The first few cases of COVID-19 started showing up in spring 2020, where they’d have two or three patients at a time being treated in a 20-bed ICU. By July and the ensuing months, the ICU was regularly full of COVID patients. Self expanded its ICU in July by adding additional beds on the second floor of the patient tower, but staff were already identifying places where they could house additional ICU patients.
“That was the first surge and after that, October, November, December, the numbers started going down,” Albores said. “Now, after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, we’re feeling the surge again.”
By late December, Self had to expand its COVID patient wing further to accommodate the post-holiday surge. January has proven to be the worst month yet for Greenwood County in terms of confirmed COVID cases.
Albores recently ended up working two weeklong shifts back to back, with many days stretching past 12 hours. He and the other doctors and medical staff do rounds on more than 20 patients, caring for COVID and non-COVID patients alike and often having to suddenly provide assistance for patients admitted from other departments.
People’s hearts stop and require CPR while others struggle to breathe and have to be put on ventilators.
“We get pulled in all different directions to handle acute situations such as those,” he said. “It’s physically, mentally and emotionally tiring. Physically, you’re there for 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 know these patients, because one wrong move and some of them could technically die.”
He said there’s no doubt we’re still in a second surge of cases, and the influx of people following the holidays was taxing on every medical staffer and physician. Frontline workers have to keep pushing, however, and looking at each victory as the reason to keep pressing forward.
“Now, as opposed to the first surge, we have something to look forward to, because we have the vaccine,” he said. “There’s actually light at the end of the tunnel, and we have hope.”
The initial supply of the vaccines has not met the burgeoning demand, and Albores said everyone is needed to do their part to help prevent continued spread while people get vaccinated. He said people need to keep taking the pandemic seriously and wearing masks, practicing social distancing and staying at home when possible. When it comes time, he said he hopes everyone will step up and get the vaccine when it’s available to them.
“Health care workers are really tired; day in and day out it seems like nothing has really changed. It’s not sustainable,” he said. “People should really do their part.”
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