Six swabs a shift: hospital units battle over precious rapid Covid tests
Walking into the hospital these days I’m greeted by a hi-tech thermal scanner reading my body temperature. At the start of the coronavirus crisis, the screenings in the lobby consisted of a nod and smile from a familiar security guard. That morphed into a nurse taking my temperature and asking me questions about my health. Now, I’m back to nodding and smiling at my security friend, with the scanner glancing at me from across the room. Two months into this bizarre new work life, the only consistencies are the inconsistencies.
The Covid unit’s full again, perhaps because of the Easter holiday two weeks ago – when Californians went out in droves to enjoy the warm weather. We hit the ground running, picking up where the day shift has left off. Our first case of the night is a belligerent drinker found in his room at a board-andcare, short of breath and coughing. His malodorous insults combined with his inebriated loss of inhibitions prompts the doctors to use one of our precarious rapid Covid swabs to rule him out as a danger to staff. With results in a mere 30 minutes, these swabs have quickly become one of our most helpful tools, but each shift gets just six to use.
Our pickled patient is negative, which means he gets to leave our unit promptly. An hour later, we opt to use another a swab. The patient is a strong Covid-19 candidate: short of breath with audible wheezes, hands on his knees while sitting on the edge of the bed really working to breathe. He’s on the verge of needing to be intubated but could still be helped by a less invasive respirator. Those BiPap machines are great, but they would aerosolize the virus and put staff and other patients in grave danger. He miraculously tests negative, gets hooked up to a BiPap machine and improves throughout the shift.
We’re down several swabs, but the ICU pushes us to use another one on a patient who’s about to be admitted to their unit. We feel the patient doesn’t meet the criteria so we tell them to use one of their swabs instead. Hospital politics are in full swing now. The ICU refuses to accept the patient unless we test him. But would they really let the patient linger in the ER over a rapid test? The standoff is resolved after a few minutes. Walking out of the ICU after dropping off the patient, we hear the ICU nurse whisper one of our most endearing acronyms under her breath … Fern (fucking ER nurse).
The hectic night is slowing down as a 100-year-old woman from a skilled nursing facility is brought in with Covid-like symptoms. After getting her settled, I have a few minutes and all of the sudden realize how unbelievable it is that she was born during the last great global pandemic – the 1918 influenza. Her parents must have been worried about bringing a child into such a tumultuous world. And now here she is, sharp as a tack, a centenarian living through another pandemic. There will be children born today in this same hospital, who may find themselves in a similar situation 100 years from now. We are all witnessing a historic global shift. I can’t help but wonder how history will remember us, and whose stories will be told.