Page 4 - Providence St. Jude Option A

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— the mayor pro tem has refused to wear a mask at public events.
Dr. Harry Peled, medical director of the ICU, called the last few weeks, “incredibly grim when you look at the numbers of cases and the people refusing to wear masks.” He called the resistance to following health directives, “highly aggravating for all of us in healthcare.”
They had come up with a solution for those people, he joked wryly: “You get to walk the COVID rooms without any PPE.”
care doctor. “It’s hard for us to predict which person once they get the coronavirus will be one of the ones who become severely ill. A lot of the ones who become severely ill don’t do well, despite our best efforts.”
Suffering through a surge that they believe stems from Thanksgiving travel and gatherings, they fear what’s coming next.
“We’re very concerned that people getting together for Christmas and New Year’s is going to lead to an even bigger wave,” Katz said.
Every room is a window into the indiscriminate cruelty of the virus.
There are patients in their 90s, 50s, 40s and 20s, some admitted the night before and others who have been there for weeks. Behind sliding doors, some wore pressurized masks — the max level of support patients can receive, short of going on a ventilator.
Many of the patients were sedated. When they woke up, nurses had to tell them where they were. Staff shifted patients’ positions throughout the day so they wouldn’t get bed sores.
Inside Room 22, nurse practitioner Gloria Franklin held a purple iPad up to Margaret Gallegos-Capetello. Her niece, niece’s husband and their two children were waiting to greet her.
“Margaret, open your eyes darling,” Franklin coaxed.
For healthcare workers, the dire 2020 holiday season has underscored how dangerous and volatile the pandemic has become. In Orange County, as of Saturday there are nearly 2,000 people hospitalized, 432 of them in the ICU.
“We see what these patients are going through,” said Dr. Michael Katz, a critical