Covid follow up
Oct. 23rd, 2021 10:32 pmSo, yes, I did catch Covid while we were in Vegas.
Mom felt ill on the 1st, tested positive on September 2 and was immediately given the monoclonal antibodies. I tested on the 2nd at a walk-in testing site, started coughing 8 hours later & had the chest cold from hell with a mild fever 24 hours after that. My test results were still pending Saturday morning the 4th, but my provider sent me to the ER to be seen. He sent me to the ‘other’ hospital in-town, the one that wasn’t the regional trauma center, figuring I’d get seen faster. I’d worked in that ER while I was still in practice, & can tell you that Saturday morning at 8 AM should have been near empty. Not any longer. I waited 6 hours for a room.
They had converted the waiting room into a triage area, while everyone waits socially distanced out on the patio. They’d call you in fill out paperwork & send you back out, call you in, get vitals, & send you back out. By the time I actually got into a room, I’d had a chest film, blood work, and a rapid Covid test, since they couldn’t get the results from 2 days earlier. The nurse told me the rapid test was positive as they put me on the stretcher. it was still another hour before I saw the doc for all 8 minutes and another hour before getting the monoclonal antibodies. I headed for home at almost 6pm.
Four hours later I had shaking chills and a fever of 101.5, which broke an hour later. By the following Wednesday I began feeling significantly better. By the Monday thereafter it was as though I had never been ill.
I still had to deal with my abject rage.
While I waited outside the ER, I watched folks sitting outside with things I’m pretty certain were not Covid. There was one young woman I suspect was passing a kidney stone, intermittently writhing in pain, intermittently vomiting. She was there when I got there, and still sitting outside when they brought me in 6 hours later. This in a county with good vaccine acceptance & still the ER was awash in mostly unvaccinated Covid cases. That poor woman was miserable. She shouldn’t have had to wait that long to be evaluated. However, my greatest rage isn’t about her as awful as that is.
I found out 2 days after I was seen that the only reason I had gotten the monoclonals, were 2 colleagues who had gone to bat for me. My pcp and a second doc on staff had argued with the ER doc. The ER guy was disinclined to medicate me; I’d had the vaccines. I wasn’t that sick. He’d wanted to save that dose of monoclonals for someone who might present sicker than I. What galls me, is that most people who would have been sicker would likely be someone who’d chosen not to vaccinate.
Before I go any further, let me stress while I was not on death’s door, I met all the criteria for the monoclonals. I’m older, underlying medical issues that put me at significantly greater risk to do poorly. I was only 36 hours into symptoms and the monoclonals work best when given early. And yes, statistics were in my favor to do well, but there are no guarantees. In 36 hours I had the chest cold from hell; what would have happened in another week? The ER doc was willing to throw those dice. My PCP was not.
I had someone willing to go to bat for me, willing to look out for my best interests. How many folks don’t? I could easily have fallen through that crack, without the protection I met the criteria for. Angry doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel, when I contemplate the factors in play. The idiots that made this pandemic a political issue, & have without shame fueled the carnage this virus has wrought on our community, our health care system and our national psyche, are both unconscionable and unforgivable.