Over the course of the last two years, as COVID-19 violently extinguished 840,000 American lives, I’ve read about the strain the pandemic has placed on our doctors and nurses. But I did not fully appreciate the fraying rope that is our health care system until last month, when both my elderly parents got COVID-19.
The call I’d been dreading for nearly two years came the morning of Dec. 27, 2021, from my mother, and the symptoms were all too familiar: coughing, trouble breathing, chest pressure, body aches and fatigue.
After a 10-minute squabble in which she tried to convince me it was just the worst cold she’d ever had, I prevailed and she took a COVID-19 test. It was positive.
When my mom began teaching at a university in the ’80s, she started using the university’s hospital for her medical needs. Given that the hospital is highly ranked, I was confident my mother’s COVID-19 infection would be met with great medical treatment. Boy, was I wrong.
Trouble getting treatment
The problems began when my mother contacted her doctor, only to find she was on vacation. She’s entitled, and the university said a covering doctor would call. Instead, the call came from a nurse who essentially instructed my mother not to come to the hospital unless something catastrophic happened, like her blood oxygen fell below a safe level.
End the maddening vaccine mandate: COVID-positive nurses are in our hospitals. But Biden’s mandate forbids unvaccinated ones.
An 85-year-old woman, with other serious medical conditions, has a potentially deadly viral infection that can attack the lungs – and is complaining about chest pressure – and no one has any interest in pressing a stethoscope to her chest to take a listen?
When it became clear we could not rely on the hospital to do anything more than arrange a “catch you before you hit cement” visit to the emergency room, I got involved. I suggested a prescription for Paxlovid, the Pfizer pill that was recently approved by the FDA…
Source : yahoo
