The 7 Stages of Covid
 

I have never done a cut-and-paste from a published article, but that's the only way I could do this. Unlike other cut-and-pastes I have seen that often do not cite the source, I will do so. . .

This is what is known to research as a primary source. Primary sources are defined as first-hand accounts of a topic by people who had a connection with it.

The following article was published in the Op-Ed section of the LA Times, August 26, 2021. The writer is Karen Gallardo, a respiratory therapist at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.

(In spite of the disagreements we Villagers can have sometimes on TOTV, I think most of us have sense enough to have been vaccinated. We duly vaccinated, older and (sometimes) wiser, people do not seem to be the age-group that welcomed Covid back to another rampant run.

I have boomer friends who cannot get their adult children to be vaccinated -- not to protect their own children, not to protect themselves, and not to protect their "old" parents. Family dynamics for some are getting downright weird. . .but. . .I digress.)

Here's the article. Read it and weep.

Boomer



Op-Ed: On the front lines, here’s what the seven stages of severe COVID-19 look like


I’m a respiratory therapist. With the fourth wave of the pandemic in full swing, fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, the trajectory of the patients I see, from admission to critical care, is all too familiar. When they’re vaccinated, their COVID-19 infections most likely end after Stage 1. If only that were the case for everyone.

Get vaccinated. If you choose not to, here’s what to expect if you are hospitalized for a serious case of COVID-19.


Stage 1. You’ve had debilitating symptoms for a few days, but now it is so hard to breathe that you come to the emergency room. Your oxygen saturation level tells us you need help, a supplemental flow of 1 to 4 liters of oxygen per minute. We admit you and start you on antivirals, steroids, anticoagulants or monoclonal antibodies. You’ll spend several days in the hospital feeling run-down, but if we can wean you off the oxygen, you’ll get discharged. You survive.

Stage 2. It becomes harder and harder for you to breathe. “Like drowning,” many patients describe the feeling. The bronchodilator treatments we give you provide little relief. Your oxygen requirements increase significantly, from 4 liters to 15 liters to 40 liters per minute. Little things, like relieving yourself or sitting up in bed, become too difficult for you to do on your own. Your oxygen saturation rapidly declines when you move about. We transfer you to the intensive care unit.

Stage 3. You’re exhausted from hyperventilating to satisfy your body’s demand for air. We put you on noninvasive, “positive pressure” ventilation — a big, bulky face mask that must be Velcro’d tightly around your face so the machine can efficiently push pressure into your lungs to pop them open so you get enough of the oxygen it delivers.

Stage 4. Your breathing becomes even more labored. We can tell you’re severely fatigued. An arterial blood draw confirms that the oxygen content in your blood is critically low. We prepare to intubate you. If you’re able to and if there’s time, we will suggest that you call your loved ones. This might be the last time they’ll hear your voice.
We connect you to a ventilator. You are sedated and paralyzed, fed through a feeding tube, hooked to a Foley catheter and a rectal tube. We turn your limp body regularly, so you don’t develop pressure ulcers — bed sores. We bathe you and keep you clean. We flip you onto your stomach to allow for better oxygenation. We will try experimental therapeutics.

Stage 5. Some patients survive Stage 4. Unfortunately, your oxygen levels and overall condition have not improved after several days on the ventilator. Your COVID-infested lungs need assistance and time to heal, something that an ECMO machine, which bypasses your lungs and oxygenates your blood, can provide. But alas, our community hospital doesn’t have that capability.

If you’re stable enough, you will get transferred to another hospital for that therapy. Otherwise, we’ll continue treating you as best we can. We’re understaffed and overwhelmed, but we’ll always give you the best care we can.

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.

The long hospital stay and your depressed immune system make you susceptible to infections. A chest X-ray shows fluid accumulating in your lung sacs. A blood clot may show up, too. We can’t prevent these complications at this point; we treat them as they present.

If your blood pressure drops critically, we will administer vasopressors to bring it up, but your heart may stop anyway. After several rounds of CPR, we’ll get your pulse and circulation back. But soon, your family will need to make a difficult decision.

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.

Karen Gallardo is a respiratory therapist at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.
________________________________________

Boomer, my daughter considers the vaccine a “medical procedure”. She would rather leave the country if mandatory vaccinations, than get vaccinated. Both of her parents taught at university and she also attended. Both of her parents are even ready for the booster so it is not our example. I have learned to respect her choice … with a broken heart. I pray and hope I never have to face the day when she will say to me, “Mom, I’ve tested positive”. If you have any words of wisdom for me, I am really listening.

Only my opinion…..you should respect her choice, (as I’m sure you would), the same as in other decisions she may make regarding her body.

We have friends that have one child with a brand new baby and she witnessed firsthand the struggles that people experienced in the hospital and still no dice. Once they are of age what can you do?

We decided to be supportive. In this case, it's like fighting city hall. We've seen others try to convince her. Hoping for the best for those who can't see the other path....who knows, they may be correct, but I doubt it.

One of my long time close friends has a daughter who is a physician at UCLA treating Covid cases. Her daughter is furious at the unvaccinated who are overwhelming the hospital. Today I got my Pfizer booster shot!

Good for you manaboutown. Say it loud and proud. I got my Moderna Booster about two weeks ago.

We still mask up when we feel it's appropriate. I don't give a rats NOTHING about what anyone thinks about it either.

I don't judge them for their decisions. I just judge my immediate family but only with my wife.

VA called and told me to come in last week for my booster. Needless to say, I did.

Another longtime friend has a daughter who is an MD professor at Harvard. She performs surgeries at Mass General. I have heard so many Covid horror stories from her, including amputations. Brrr. My barber is down to 1/2 a kidney due to Covid. Two people I knew, 29 and 30 years of age, unvaccinated, died over the last week, probably from the delta variant. The 30 year old was a woman with three children under five years of age. Tragic...

I applaud you for this post. It needs to be said and heard.

It is the truth and worse I have known a husband and wife, married for almost sixty years that died like this and without each other or their beloved children present. They were from Cincinnati and I taught their granddaughter and knew their daughter well too. They died just about a year ago, a week apart.

I can only think of someone that we love dearly going though this and we are unable to be present.

If that article isn’t enough to get the vaccine, I don’t know what is. Scary stuff.

Absolutely fabulous post! Thank you, Boomer.

Wife and I are booked for our boosters next week.
I cannot understand how anyone who is able, and has no medical reason not to, does not get vaccinated if the OP is the alternative.

A Story That Needs To Be Told
 

Thanks Boomer!

Most unvaccinated people who get Covid do not go to the hospital and recover just fine. No one wants to hear that though

Booster Shot.?
 

Being as a Booster shot has only been recommended just last week and not Approved by either FDA or CDC, response from both coming sometime this week, just what is this "Booster" shot you've taken?

Interesting.

Carl

Booster shots (third shots) of Pfizer and Moderna for certain immunocompromised individuals were authorized a few weeks ago.

Booster shots of Pfizer for 65 and older and probably some critical care workers are likely to be authorized soon.

It is right beside you
 

I kept hearing we all got the vaccine here do not worry. I got a landscaping guy and his employee local white around 30 told me he didn't believe in it so his wife and kid didn't either. Then gave me some urban legend passed on story that they knew someone that got vaccinated and was in the hospital with covid for 72 days.

They are by you around here and places you go to or who you bring over.

"Pfizer's shot lowered the risk of hospitalization by 91% in the first four months after it was administered. Protection went down to 77% after four months."

OR…… BECAUSE WE LIVE IN FL…..YOU CAN HAVE THESE STAGES OF COVID

Stage 1: out of nowhere your hit with a headache, fever and a burning cough
Stage 2: you take a home Covid test……it’s positive……
Stage 3: you go online and register for monoclonal antibodies treatment at Barn Storm….you get in that day
Stage 4: you choose between IV or 4 shots…..if you have symptoms go for the IV it works faster
Stage 5: you go home call your doctor for a phone apt, your doctor orders a ZPac and prednisone
Stage 6: you stay home for 10 days, take your medicine, get rest, drink tons of water and take a short walk every day
Stage 7: on day 11 you feel good you may still have a small cough but all and all the monoclonal did it’s job.
Stage 8: now you have Natural immunity not a leaky shot immunity, the chances of get Covid again are very very slim……unlike all the breakthrough cases

No I don’t wish Covid on anyone but there are ways to walk through this without getting really sick. FYI the infusion is for anyone vax and non-vax a like.

I am so over everyone trying to push their beliefs on others and if you think that vax people don’t get really sick and even die you are sadly missed informed

This vax vs non-vax is worse then the election……..stop the hate and just do YOU

Could Not Read All of It
 

I stopped reading about halfway through it. Unbearably sad. Thank you to health care workers who work with Covid patients. What she describes has occurred more than 600,000 times in the United States.

I have known several people who got the virus and were unvaccinated. All recovered with no long term effects. The shots do help with symptoms but you can get it anyway. A very small percentage die, mostly people with physical issues, obesity, aged related issues. Over 98 percent recover! These stories always being to mind the people who sell their house in two hours. Yes, it can happen but usually doesn’t.

The vaccines werent fda approved either when they first came out. Yes, the booster is available. Im scheduled in a couple of days

And…
 

And…there are those…like every single person I know personally, who get cold like symptoms, plus some loss of taste and smell, and get better and move on. I hate posts like this that try to instill fear. You are probably the ones I see driving in your carts wearing a mask. 🙄

Tell her to immediately get the Regeneron and she'll be fine.

Your opinion does not mean you are right. Different strokes for different folks. Will you cast the first stone?

Unvaxed
 

Yes…..and that’s called “Russian Roulette “. Feeling lucky?

Regeneron......monoclonal antibody treatment!!:clap2::clap2::clap2:

And a shot of what not is "Not Russian Roulette"??

Exactly
 

Absolutely correct……99.95%

Odds
 

Science and odds are on the vaccinated side. Millions of shots throughout the entire world and has proven to be 91% effective. Unvaxed gives you 0% effectiveness and you are gambling that your immune system can handle it, with the help of available medications. I’ll take the better odds, of available medications and the vaccine….proven better effective.

Sure. I am. Good therapeutic medicine out there that's safe.

Two neighbors, overweight, not in particularly good health and in their 70's just came down with COVID. They and their wives took the Regeneron treatment and all are just fine.

I'm over 65. No booster for me.

When a little over 1% of Covid cases result in death, it is impossible that only 0.05% of cases result in hospitalization.

They key word is “most”. Anyone, unvaccinated, who is willing to play Russian Roulette with their health is not thinking clearly, sorry to say.

Getting my Moderna booster in a couple of days.

My understanding is the booster shot is the same exact vaccine formula and the same exact dose of the original vaccine. I really wish the manufacturers would develop a vaccine that specifically targets all the variants that the virus has mutated so far, including Delta. Having said that, I will take what is being offered now.

Are you referring to FULL FDA approval for Pfizer booster shots?

Thanks for posting.

the 7 stages of covid
 

A person can go to a number of articles, opinions, doctors, etc. etc. and find the information to support their own opinions. My wife and I (both boomers) do not (and will not) get flu shots, shingles shots, covid shot, or any other shot offered to us. We have both had covid and amazingly enough survived to tell about it. In fact I personally know many people including family members and friends who have had it....NONE of them died. A person must do what is right for them, you are exposed to many harmful things everyday.
Stay clear of the golf cart paths if you don't want to get run over.

I’m all for the Regeneron treatment for anyone who qualifies for it. It is a wonderful thing that there is a treatment that works for Covid.

Does this Regeneron treatment have FULL FDA APPROVAL like the Pfizer vaccine does? Just wondering.

The vaccines are the opposite of playing Russian Roulette. The vaccines SAVE lives, not kill ya.

Most of us have people that we love, and then people that we really like. At our age that group is easily one hundred people if you count friends in your neighborhood, golf friends, and people married to people we see a lot.

Out of those hundred people, three will die from Covid. Three real people.

We have lived in our small Village of 52 houses for eleven years. It is separate from the others with swamp land and a busy road. Most of the homes have two people living in them and some have one. We gathered frequently at the mail drop to socialize or at Laurel Manor before the pandemic. We stop and chat when we see people out walking. In eleven years you really get to know your neighbors pretty well especially when everyone is retired. Our Village numbers less than a hundred people. One of our neighbors died of Covid.

Overall three percent of Americans have died from Covid, that is including all ages, but when you group older people alone, the number doubles.

It is a horrible death that can be prevented. Please get both shots. People love you.

I, for one, am glad there are options. I'm vaxed, but would never insist anyone else get vaxed. It just rubs me the wrong way. Get the jab if you want or use the therapeutics if needed. But life needs to go on. Otherwise, what's the point?