In case you might be wondering what it's like in a Covid area in a hospital, other than what you have seen on TV. I'm here to tell ya.
With sharp pain in the right upper area of my back and shortness of breath I called my pulmonologist for something for pleurisy. He refused to order anything without an office visit. After hearing of my symptoms, he decided I might have a blood clot in my right lung and promptly sent me to the ER.
I told him, "no one wants to go there these days". He insisted I must. I walked out of his office and told Bruce we had to go to the ER...now. A half mile later, we were there. They stopped me at the door. As they took my temperature and asked why I was there a transport chair arrived. They told Bruce to get lost. "No visitors allowed here."
Within five to seven minutes our world turned upside down. They took me inside to an isolation room for a brief interview and an EKG. Some one decided I was a possible Covid-19 risk. I was then placed in a "negative air chamber" to wait my turn. The fans blasted away for more than an hour, then a nurse arrived in full PPE and took me to an obvious quarantine area into an exam room.
Many questions. Much blood drawn, plus a Covid swab of the nostrils (and it felt like the lower brain pan). Then a wait of two and a half hours for a CT scan of the lungs. Then in forty-five minutes the results. Good news. No blood clot. More good news. No pneumonia.
There will be no results from the Covid test until possibly Monday (four days from now).* Go home and self quarantine. Duh. That's what I've been doing since March 16th!
Let it be known. Every time someone had entered the room I was in, they were in full PPE. And as they departed my room they discarded it, rolled it up and put it into a container inside my room. I felt like a leper.
Before I departed the area I was given a big infusion of two different steroids...to lessen the inflammation of possible pleurisy.
Stay safe. Wear your mask.
