Angels of mercy face death on the frontline

TANG Huan, a head nurse at the intensive care unit of Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, worked her first night shift in Wuhan on Friday.

She was one of the second group of medical workers sent from Shanghai to the Hubei Province capital to help treat patients with coronavirus-related pneumonia.

After putting on protective clothing, a mask and goggles, she entered a ward at the Guanggu branch of Wuhan Third Hospital to find colleagues trying to save a patient.

Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation attempts had been going on for more than 30 minutes but the patient showed no signs of life. Tang could see death was imminent.

But the doctors and nurses were not giving up easily.

“That scene gave me a heavy heart,” she said. “As an ICU nurse in charge, I meet critical patients and save their lives every day. But this time it’s totally different. The ward is like a battlefield and we nurses have become soldiers. The only thing we want to do is to drive death away and save patients from his scythe.”

The nerves of nurses in this ICU are like bows drawn to their limit and not to be released for a second. Their eyes are glued to the screen and the images on it showing the changes in patients’ vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, breath and oxygen levels.

A young female patient was a medical worker at the hospital who showed symptoms of the virus on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Due to the low oxygen level, it was hard for her breathe. With tears in her eyes, she told Tang she was afraid of going to sleep because she might never wake up again.

‘Hold my hand. Trust us’

Tang’s colleague, 23-year-old nurse Ni Wei, held the patient’s hands and told her to rest. “We’ll take care of you and never let the tube fail. Trust us,” she said. For patients, more rest can give them strength to fight.

Qi Yili, another nurse from Yueyang Hospital, was working with others to care for a man in a serious condition. They found his oxygen level and blood pressure dropping and called doctors at once.

It’s was the sixth time that night they had feared for the patients.

But this time, death won.

A nurse who had taken care of the man for several days burst into tears.

Life is fragile, she said.

But she soon stopped sobbing and started to clean the patient’s body to prepare to “send him during the last ride to heaven.”

At dawn, some 17 hours previously, Dr Zha Qingfang from Renji Hospital had also faced a patient’s death at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, 30 kilometers from where Tang is helping.

As one of the first group of medics sent to Wuhan, it was her seventh day on duty.

At 2:30am, the blood pressure of a woman in her 50s suddenly fell. Fortunately, her condition improved after immediate treatment given by Zha and two other doctors.

However, three hours later, another patient’s condition worsened. “Her health condition was always in danger. Before we took in charge of her, she showed symptoms of disseminated intravascular coagulation,” Zha said. DIC is a rare but serious condition that causes abnormal clotting.

“We tried our best to save her. We did blood transfusions, platelet transfusions, and adjusted the drugs used on her to save her. We did all means of treatment that her family accepted.” But that still couldn’t stop her from arriving at the end of her life.

“She died 7:30am. When I called her husband and informed him of her death, the man cried on the other side of the phone,” Zha said. “He asked if he can come and see her for the last time and keep her cellphone as a memorial. But I couldn’t give him a positive answer. I don’t know if his request can be approved during such a special period.”

Zha felt she had lost all her words and hanged up the phone with tears in her eyes.

When she was off duty, she read news on her phone and learned the World Health Organization had declared the novel coronavirus epidemic as a PHEIC, or Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

“I firmly believe that we’ll win this battle. We’ll never shrink back. We’ll work with each other.”

Editor’s note:

Many Shanghai medical workers are already in or on their way to support Wuhan, a city now severely stricken by the novel coronavirus outbreak. They are “the most beautiful people who are going in the reverse direction than most others.” They are combating the new epidemic on the frontline to protect all people in the country. Some shared their work experience in Wuhan with Shanghai Daily.