Indianapolis nurse sees hope as some COVID-19 patients recover
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An IU Health nurse says morale in her care unit is getting a boost as workers see some of their first COVID-19 patients finally leave the hospital after going through one of the scariest moments of their lives.
When patients come in, workers in COVID-19 units don’t know if those patients will ever get to leave. But when they finally do, employees say they can see the end isn’t too far off.
When virus cases were first identified and hospitals started making COVID units, nobody knew what to expect. Frontline healthcare workers saw firsthand the horrors of the virus, and they didn’t know what to do.
“It’s just patients asking me, ‘Am I going to die? What’s going to happen?’ And then I don’t really have the answers,” Taryna Bradley, an IU Health Methodist nurse, said.
“They’re scared and that’s probably the low point for me is … I don’t have a whole lot of answers. And then just coming home and dealing with my family. Because my kids are little and they don’t understand why I’m under stress and why mommy is crying and why they can’t give me a hug as soon as I walk in the door,” Bradley said.
They’ve been thrown into the deep end for the last couple of weeks and at this point, Bradley says they’re finally adapting to the new normal.
“We kind of know what we’re doing now,” Bradley said. “But it’s just scary because of the unknown of the changes.”
IU Health says they have around 49% of their ventilators in use right now on their 225 patients, which may seem like a lot. But IU Health says that’s about the amount of ventilator use they had before the pandemic.
And now they’re seeing people start to recover.
“So I got to give them their first meal, which consists of applesauce,” Bradley said. “But it’s the best applesauce they’ve ever had! So that’s a bright point. Like, OK, we know what we’re facing and we’re coming out on the other side of it.”
But it’s not time to celebrate yet. Indiana still hasn’t hit what health officials anticipate to be the peak of cases.
“We’re spending our days and nights planning for it to get worse,” Dr, Jonathan Gottlieb, IU Health chief medical executive, said. “We’re hoping it doesn’t, but we don’t want to get caught short.”
But employees say that seeing recoveries and adapting to the new workflow gives them hope that the end is in sight.
“Yeah, I mean I think we’ll probably be overloaded a little bit with patients if it goes like it has in other states and other countries,” Bradley said. “I feel like it will happen, but we are kind of ready for it. As much as we possibly can be ready for something like that.”