Nurse erects ICU at his home to treat relatives with virus

With nearby hospital stressed, he took matters in own hands.

AGIOS ATHANASIOS, GREECE — What does a medical professional do when his wife and in- laws contract the disease at the center of a months- long pandemic?

Gabriel Tachtatzoglou, a critic al care nurse, did not feel good about the treatment options available in Greece’s second- largest city when his wife, both her parents and her brother came down with COVID- 19 in November. Thessaloniki has been among the areas of Greece with the most confirmed coronavirus cases, and hospital intensive care units were filling up.

Tachtatzoglou, who had to quarantine and could not go to work once his relatives tested positive for the virus, decided to put his ICU experience to use by looking after them himself.

That decision, his family says, probably saved their lives.

“If we had gone to the hospital, I don’t know where we would have ended up,” Polychoni Stergiou, the nurse’s 64- yearold mother- in- law, said. “That didn’t happen, thanks to my son- in- law.”

Tachtatzoglou set up a makeshift ICU in the downstairs apartment of his family’s two- story home in the village of Agios Athanasios, located about 20 miles from the city. He rented, borrowed and modified the monitors, oxygen delivery machines and other equipment his loved ones might need.

“I’ve been working in the intensive care ward for 20 years, and I didn’t want to put my in- laws through the psychological strain

of separation. Plus, there was already a lot of pressure on the health service,” Tachtatzoglou told the AP in an interview.

In most countries, doctors and nurses are discouraged from treating close relatives and friends on the theory that emotional bonds could cloud their judgment and affect their skills. Tachtatzoglou says he remained in daily contact with doctors

at Papageorgiou Hospital, the overwhelmed facility where he works, while caring for his sick family members, and that he would have hospitalized any of the four if they needed to be intubated.

“I looked after them up until the point where it would pose no danger,” he said. “At all times, I was ready to move them to the hospital, if needed.”

GIANNIS PAPANIKOS/ AP Gabriel Tachtatzoglou, a critical care nurse, used his 20 years of experience working to help critically ill patients to convert his home into an ICU in order to treat members of his own family — his wife, her parents and her brother — while he was quarantined, instead of sending them to stressed hospital units in nearby Thessaloniki, Greece.