On the front lines, here's what the seven stages of severe COVID-19 look like

[The Mouth]

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-08-26/pandemic-covid-19-stages-vaccination-intensive-care-respiratory-therapist?_amp=true&fbclid=IwAR268jf6Dndn97aXXIrJxagBsbO951iC3Z3w60EJRDmVbVbopiRJA7dxtpc

Great LA Times article. Scary

I have not seen this posted yet....

[Me.]

1. Dear God

[skylucy]

2. Everyone who refuses to be vaccinated should have to read this. Or maybe someone needs

to read it to them.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. ...

[sheshe2]

4. Stage 7

Stage 7: After several meetings with the palliative care team, your family decides to withdraw care. We extubate you, turning off the breathing machinery. We set up a final FaceTime call with your loved ones. As we work in your room, we hear crying and loving goodbyes. We cry, too, and we hold your hand until your last natural breath.

I’ve been at this for 17 months now. It doesn’t get easier. My pandemic stories rarely end well.

[IcyPeas]

5. geez Stage 6:

Stage 6. The pressure required to open your lungs is so high that air can leak into your chest cavity, so we insert tubes to clear it out. Your kidneys fail to filter the byproducts from the drugs we continuously give you. Despite diuretics, your entire body swells from fluid retention, and you require dialysis to help with your renal function.

[rurallib]

6. Please post in GD also - people need to see this

[The Mouth]

9. Thanks. Done!

[lambchopp59]

7. I can also attest

In 32 years of radiologic technologist practice, I've never seen anything like COVID-- how destructive to lung tissue, how quickly it can completely infect a patient's entire lungs.
January 2020, I caught what I figured was just a bad flu, edging into pneumonia, despite flu inoculation. Only in retrospect did I discover what I'd suffered through. My old labrador had just had a tumor removed, we were laid up together. I absolutely could not move air unless propped up all night, 2 nights, completely exhausted 2 albuterol inhalers, keeping the phone charged and ready to call the ambulance. I was lucky, although my entire chest burned and I was so fearful of another heart attack. Here was the discovery in retrospect: I couldn't keep anything down and poor appetite was made worse because everything tasted like aluminum foil.
Despite a mild case, stage 1 edging into 2, it did plenty of damage. I felt like crap for over a year, 61 years old but very mild arthritis became visibly apparent and severely limited my ADL's. Mild, mostly seasonal and dust exposure asthma became daily medicated, completely inhaler dependent every day. The smoke from Napa valley fire exacerbated that.
Here it is, one year and nine months later. I'm only now, aside from asthma inhaler frequency, returning to something resembling my baseline. I'm on a final recovery attempt "sabbatical". Arguing with anti-maskers in the hospital 🤬 drove my blood pressure through the roof. In a bit over a month, I'm back to the front lines.
I think we all have lost count of the ways 2020 sucked.

[The Mouth]

8. I had it in early January 2020m, too

We were down in Chinatown around NYE.

Worst flu, ever - of course I get the shot every year. Combined with a cough and congestion in my lungs that was unreal. I had run a half marathon a few weeks before and was training for my first full one. To me, everything tasted and smelled like when I used a concrete saw to cut bricks. Couldn't taste anything but that dusty, burned smell, for a couple of weeks. I was 59; I gather you live somewhere near me, I'm in Santa Rosa. I am finally back to being able to do 10K, but it took half a year....

[lambchopp59]

10. I was on travel gig in Ukiah at the time

That's what I do now, travel gigs, exclusively. I used to hold licensure in several southwestern states, but the 2010 job market crash rendered all western states but California a waste of money to maintain.
It's a total crap shoot where in the state I'll work next.