Gary Vella awoke at 2 a.m. one morning last month with excruciating stomach pain.
For two hours, he tried to endure it, fearing a visit to an emergency room where he could be exposed to COVID-19 patients during a pandemic.
The 50-year-old South Lyon resident feared bringing the coronavirus home to his family, but in the end, the crippling pain was too much to bear.
“I said, ‘One of us is going down,’” Vella laughed in describing his decision to go.
He was shocked when he arrived at Ascension Providence Hospital in Novi around 4 a.m. April 13 and was alone in the emergency waiting room.
“It really struck me. Based on the news and everything, I thought there would be people sitting in the hallways, but it was pretty quiet at the time,” he said.
Vella was admitted immediately and the next day had surgery to remove his gallbladder.
Dr. Steven McGraw, emergency room physician at Ascension Novi and Ascension Southfield stresses that cases like Vella’s can’t wait, and others with alarming symptoms shouldn’t be delaying medical attention, either. But they are, and the results can be devastating.
Coronavirus patients share their stories:
Westland coronavirus survivor grateful for nurses, socks, return home from hospital
Northville man describes harrowing battle with coronavirus
One of Michigan's first two coronavirus patients on what it's like as medical guinea pig
McGraw said there has been a precipitous drop in the number of non-COVID patients visiting the Ascension Hospital emergency rooms.
He said he believes many are suffering calamities at home including heart attacks, strokes or other neurologic injuries including brain hemorrhages and aneurysms for which they would otherwise seek immediate treatment, but brush off symptoms or delay needed care for fear of coronavirus infection.
“I would hate to get us to a point where fear of being in the emergency room makes us suffer consequences that are irreversible and suffer lifelong impacts, but could have been easily improved upon with intervention,” he said.
That point may have already been reached, as Mcgraw noted there has been a “noticeable increase” in the number of people across Michigan that are not able to be resuscitated at home. He suspects they failed to go to the hospital when intervention could have saved their lives. The hospital is safe, he said, and has taken all the precautions to protect non-COVID patients from contracting the virus.
“I would appreciate if more of the public can understand our hospitals are places where they can still get healthcare," McGraw said. "They saw how things were so bad (with the coronavirus) and they assume it’s still that bad.”
It's not.
McGraw, who is also the medical director for Oakland County, called said the middle weeks of March “strikingly bad” in the coronavirus pandemic with Oakland County hospitals “really stressed,” but he said things began to change abruptly after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders began to take effect around the end of March. That is when the number of new COVID-19 arrivals to hospitals was no longer doubling every three days.
Patients began coming in at a manageable rate, with others coming off ventilators or being discharged.
Now, the emergency rooms are actually seeing fewer patients than before the pandemic’s arrival in the state.
Before the pandemic, Ascension’s Providence Park Hospital saw 125-150 ER visits per day and Providence in Southfield saw between 160-220 per day. Now he estimates the volume is down 20-30 percent, including some of the people who need the most urgent care: for heart attacks and strokes, twisted ovaries and bowel obstructions, ruptured appendixes, strep throat and fractures.
“Even something as simple as strep throat, you think it’s not an emergency, but it can attack the valves in your heart,” he said.
Untreated chest pain, blood clots and more can all lead to irreversible outcomes.
McGraw said one woman recently came in two days after breaking her ankle, which resulted in a much more difficult surgery due to the time and weight put on the fracture.
“Bad things can and are still happening, and these are things we can dramatically improve upon,” he said. “They give me the greatest pause, when they succumb to disease or live in an incapacitated state. A person who is now a cardiac cripple, or had a blood clot we could have dealt with, but because of a delay, they can no longer speak, read or move a leg.”
'A huge backlog'
He acknowledges, too, the problem with “elective” surgeries or “non-emergent” care being delayed. Those problems also worsen without treatment.
As examples, he points to cancer patients waiting for a lumpectomy and radiation, or cardiac patients with partially blocked arteries waiting for angioplasties and stents to be put in.
More: You'll find these Novi restaurants open for carryout during the coronavirus pandemic
More: Here are the restaurants open in Livonia during coronavirus pandemic
More: You'll find these Canton restaurants open for carryout during the coronavirus pandemic
The hospitals are gearing up to begin performing these time-sensitive procedures again, but he expects a long waiting list, particularly as patients will need to be tested for COVID 24-48 hours before surgery to ensure they are negative.
“You can imagine the logistics with limited testing capacity, and we have to do the most urgent first,” he said. “There will be a huge backlog. We know the executive order of the governor (allowing various non-emergent medical surgeries, procedures and treatments) is coming and we will be ready as a hospital to do them safely.”
For now, he and other medical staff are ready to care for the emergencies that can't wait, and provide a positive outcome.
McGraw is urging patients not to ignore symptoms of serious ailments and go to the emergency room immediately if experiencing any of the following:
- Chest pain that makes you feel faint or short of breath;
- sudden change in ability to breathe;
- severe abdominal pain that interrupts your ability to walk;
- any irregular heartbeat;
- severe headache unlike anything you've experienced;
- or any neurologic loss, including ability to speak, loss of vision, or strength and function.
“All of those are ominous,” McGraw said. “For all of us, we are going to have to learn to live with this disease for the next year and a half. We are going to social distance, not go to work if we’re sick and reduce our contacts and we can do that… It may be if this half of this zip code is having an outbreak, we test everybody and keep everybody in that zip code home. This will be an experiment to see how well we can listen to scientists and leadership.”
Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com or 517-281-2412. Follow her on Twitter @SusanBromley10.
"urgent" - Google News
May 04, 2020 at 06:35PM
https://ift.tt/3df9WQh
Doctors say don't delay hospital care for health emergencies during coronavirus pandemic - Hometown Life
"urgent" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2ya063o
https://ift.tt/3d7MC6X
urgent
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Doctors say don't delay hospital care for health emergencies during coronavirus pandemic - Hometown Life"
Post a Comment