Skip to main content

TIFU by breathing COVID fumes

I'm a doctor working in the ER and there are a lot of COVID patients every day. I know the routine of putting on all the protective gear, the masks, the treatment- this wasn't my first rodeo with COVID.

​

The patient is older, and is currently hypoxic (not getting enough oxygen), and I am suspecting a super infection with bacterial pneumonia on top. At first the patient is on 3 liters of O2, but the nurse calls me in because she can't get an arterial blood sample and it needs to be done with ultrasound to find the artery. Get into all the gear, go in with scanner, get the sample, evaluate the person, increase oxygen, get out and confer with my attending, get all the COVID regiment going.

​

The patient desaturates again- oxygen saturation needs to be above 95% in people with no lung diseases- above 92% can be acceptable in COVID cases. The patient is at 84%. On goes the gear, new arterial blood sample, increase oxygen, stabilize the patient.

​

Rinse and repeat until I've been into the room six times to stabilize the patient, who is quickly getting worse. I know the protective gear, it's like a reflex to put it all on correctly by now.

​

But the patient is still getting worse, so I put them on high flow oxygen treatment, 35 liters of flow and 35% oxygen levels. I talk to the ICU, because this patient is rapidly deteriorating and there is ONE spot free so I nab that like a greedy little gremlin.

​

Just before the patient is getting transferred, the O2 levels drops again to 68% and the nurse calls me in a panic to tell me that the patient is crashing. I rush into the protective gear, get in there and crank the high flow to the max. Eventually I manage to stabilize the patient enough for transport and they go to the ICU- an hour later they're on a respirator.

​

Yay me, right? The next day however, my attending pulls me over and asks me what sort of mask I was wearing when I went into the patients room on that 7th time and my heart just fucking plummets. I stutter out "I was wearing the wrong mask."

​

On a high flow air treatment, you have to wear an FFP3 mask. I only wore a regular surgical mask because that was the only mask at the gear station.

​

I think back on how I leaned over the patient to get the arterial blood sample with the ultrasound scanner. I remember how I held the patients hand, telling the patient we were doing everything we could and we were going to transfer to ICU. I remember the patient coughing, me standing right next to the bed, just breathing in the COVID fumes.

​

All the times I've seen COVID patients, all the times I've put on the correct gear and this one time I managed to screw up. Currently at home in isolation, waiting for the COVID tests, while all my colleagues are working their butts off at the ER.

​

TL;DR I am a dumb doctor at work, forgot to wear the right protective gear and got coughed in the face by a COVID patient. COVID sucks, wear your masks.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by putting my already skinny jeans in the dryer on high heat.

TL;DR: Was stupid and didn't realize I put my clothes on extra high heat in the dryer. Had to rock skintight skinny jeans all day with tighty whities (only clean pair I had since I procrastinate doing laundry like crazy). I guess the constant wedgies and squishing are punishment for my stupidity. Honestly don’t know who else to blame but myself for this. I’m a scatterbrained guy so I literally put the highest setting on a load with most of my clothes, and my skinny jeans that I was planning to wear today. You can probably already see where this is going, but somehow I didn’t. For context, these jeans were already pushing the limits of what could reasonably be called wearable. They fit, technically, but only in the sense that I could get them on with enough determination and a bit of strategic breathing. Sitting down in them was more of a commitment than a casual action. Still, they looked good, and I had convinced myself that discomfort was just part of the aesthetic. So this m...
Post a Comment
Read more