24 HOURS IN ER WITH SICK MOM
Susan Oliviero’s green eyes squint under fluorescent lighting in the crowded emergency room. She’s nearing 10 hours in a waiting area at Emory University Hospital’s sprawling main campus.
She shakes her head. She can’t believe how much her body hurts. The worst, she says, is her throat. “It feels like it’s on fire,” she mouths. She can barely swallow without gagging.
After nearly three years of avoiding the virus, Oliviero, my mother, had tested positive for COVID-19 just a few days earlier.
So, there we sat, on her 81st birthday. Instead of eating chocolate cake, opening presents and taking phone calls from family and friends, we were at the ER along with a line of others battling COVID as well as a host of other things.
Gone from area hospitals are the medical trailers, the beds in hallways and the line of ambulances out front. But the health care system is still feeling the strain. The newest iteration of the virus is the most easily transmissible yet, and it comes as other seasonal illnesses, like the flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or RSV, linger.
A reporter covering the pandemic for three years, I had a chance to see the convergence of all of these elements — a super contagious virus inside a vulnerable body inside an overburdened health care system — when my mother fell ill in mid-January.
COVID is not the same threat that it once was. But I know my mom is part of a demographic most at risk of severe illness from COVID. The virus poses a particular danger to adults 65 and older, even those who are vaccinated. Right now, nearly 9 out of 10 COVID deaths in the U.S. are in that age group. And she is a former smoker with high blood pressure, factors that can contribute to complications.
My mother arrived from Vermont on a Thursday. By Saturday, she had a runny nose and her eyes were watering. She didn’t say anything because she wasn’t concerned. She chalked it up to fatigue from travel.
By Monday, she was congested and felt bad. I immediately reached for a COVID home test. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been, but we were surprised by the result. She was current on all of her COVID vaccinations and usually careful, wearing masks and avoiding crowds.
I called her doctor in Vermont to get a prescription for the antiviral Paxlovid. The drug is a key weapon in preventing serious illness, but it must be taken within five days of the onset of symptoms.
My mom’s symptoms were better the next day.
She was even hungry. We thought, as did her primary care doctor, that she was on the road to recovery. Then, her condition suddenly worsened.
She started to feel weak again, developed a severe sore throat, and her congestion was becoming more of a concern. The quick reversal, frankly, scared me. Like many COVID-conscious Americans, I now have a pulse oximeter at home. That’s a device that clips onto your finger and allows you to see how much oxygen saturation is in your red blood cells. In other words, it tells you how efficiently your lungs are working. Above 95% is considered normal. My mom’s had dropped into the 80s that Thursday – and didn’t improve.
At 9 p.m., I knew it was time to go to the emergency room.
ER ROOMS AT CAPACITY
Patients at an emergency room are seen based on the severity of illness, not the order of arrival. I asked a receptionist for a ballpark on how long it might take for her to be seen by a doctor, and she told me evening wait times were averaging close to 15 hours. I thought she might be exaggerating. She wasn’t.
Shortly after we arrived, the staff did an initial assessment, and my mother was hooked up to an oxygen tank. Then she was sent back in a wheelchair to a large waiting area outside the emergency room, wearing a surgical mask over the oxygen mask.
Later, blood was drawn, and an X-ray was performed on her chest. Then, again, she was wheeled back to the waiting room. The oxygen helped. But she felt excruciating pain, now stretching from her throat to her ears.
As the hours ticked by, we witnessed a hospital system struggling to provide timely care during a wintertime rush of patients.
As the darkness of night gave way to morning light, an Emory staffer approached me in the waiting room. She apologized for the wait. The issue at that moment wasn’t that the hospital didn’t have a bed available. It didn’t have a nurse available.
Around 9 a.m., about 12 hours after we checked in, a doctor stepped inside the waiting area and we were moved into a small treatment unit in the emergency room.A nurse told us to get comfortable — my mother might not be moved into a regular hospital room for a long time, maybe 20 hours.
GIVING GRACE TO HEALTH CARE WORKERS
My mom couldn’t leave the tiny unit with a glass door because she was COVID-positive. There was no bathroom, but the little room had a portable toilet — with a missing seat.
About three hours after we were put in the little glass room –15 hours after coming to the emergency room – my mom started getting intravenous fluids and remdesivir, another antiviral. And while it wasn’t easy, she swallowed a dose of lidocaine viscous, a local anesthetic that numbs the mouth and throat.
The pain in my mom’s throat eased immediately.
Despite the wait, I felt good about the care she received. While the nurses seemed to be working as fast as they possibly could, the care inside that tiny room didn’t feel rushed in any way.
Then Dr. Elbert Chun, the Emory hospitalist in charge of my mother’s care, entered the room in a yellow isolation gown, mask and face shield.
While we had been a bit taken aback that my mom had gotten COVID, given all her precautions, Chun didn’t seem surprised at all — the latest strain is ultra-contagious. But this variant tends to cause less severe illness than earlier strains.
There were no signs of COVID pneumonia. She didn’t have blood clots. And, with each drop from her IV, she seemed to be getting better already. As I watched the beeping machines, I saw her oxygen levels rising back into the 90s.
We dimmed the lights, and my mom fell asleep.
And I slipped out the door to go home for much-needed rest.
There is no good time for getting COVID. But my mom’s timing could have been much worse.
Early in the pandemic, when doctors were facing a crush of patients stricken with a new mysterious virus, Chun said it was “nervewracking.” Complications from heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms were more common.
The delta variant, which became the dominant variant in the summer of 2021, was “very, very harsh,”
Chun said.
And “omicron is still worrisome,” he said. “But, anecdotally, I haven’t had to send patients to the ICU at such a high frequency, fortunately.”
ANTIVIRALS PROBABLY PREVENTED ICU STAY
By the next morning, my mom was in a regular room in the hospital. Her sore throat was gone. She was sitting up and cheerful. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes more relaxed. She was back to her chatty self, talking about books and movies and discussing a recipe for blackberry syrup.
When Dr. Chun visited my mom again, he seemed pleased with her improvements, though he described them as “pretty OK, not perfect.”
Paxlovid likely helped keep my mom out of the ICU, according to Chun. That, combined with steroids and the antiviral treatment during her hospital stay, “probably had the biggest effect on her great outcome,” he said.
Other factors in her favor: being fully vaccinated, which includes the updated bivalent booster, he said. The booster targets the original coronavirus strain as well as omicron subvariants.
Chun said getting tested as soon as you feel symptoms and getting antivirals as soon as possible is critical. “Don’t wait it out,” he cautioned.
After a few more tests, and another round of antiviral medications, he decided it was OK to release my mom to go home.
“You did everything right,” he told my mom. “And, unfortunately, you still went through this. On the flip side, it can be worse.”
Blendjet 2, a portable USB-C charging blender for on-the-go smoothies, shakes, margaritas, frappes or even baby food, has added a 32-ounce jar accessory.
The increased capacity is twice as big, doubling the 16-ounce jar to 32 ounces. Blendjet 2 is made so the clear jars can screw in and out for cleaning, making it just as easy to replace the smaller size on the same battery-powered base with the new bigger version without tools.
Like the smaller size, the new 32-ounce jar has measurements permanently on the jar for an even better portable option. A softtouch carrying handle is also built on the top screw on the lid of the jar.
Cleaning the new jar is just as easy as the old one, even while it’s attached to the blender base. Add water and a drop of soap, then press the blend button to clean itself.
Don’t expect the Blendjet 2 to be as powerful as a full-sized AC-powered kitchen blender, but the 4000mAh internal battery does a great job powering it for about 15 blends after a one-hour charge. BlendJet 2 is water-resistant, including the USB-C charging port.
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