Hilda Uy Forcadela, MSN, CRNA – Nurse Anesthetist, Piedmont Triad Anesthesia, P.A.
FEU-IN Batch 1990
My husband and I are both working in a medical field, my husband as a cardiac nurse, and me as a nurse anesthetist. 10 years ago, when my husband contracted H1N1 flu, he was quarantined in our house while I, pregnant with my third child has to work and take care of my other 2 young children. 10 years forward, we are confronting another infectious disease that affected the people around the globe that no one has seen or had managed before. This time our duty to our patients is more concerning because we are all ill-prepared and the disease is evolving and we are relying on the events from other countries that had been dealing with the health crisis to manage it. There is no cure or way to prevent it since there’s no vaccine. It was advised for everyone to socially distant ourselves from one another. Picture that on our 25th Wedding Anniversary last month, a memorable one indeed! With the lack of PPE and even the scarcity of testing kits like going to a war without any equipment to protect ourselves or any weapons to combat the disease in which you have no idea who is your enemy.
When the sheltering started, elective cases in the operating rooms were down. A lot of OR rooms were either closed or re-assigned as Covid rooms. Our Recovery Room was closed and converted as ICU for patients positive for Covid-19. I was furloughed for two weeks. During this time, my E-mails are being flooded with Covid-19 information, protocols, and updates most especially for my specific practice. All over the world, we tried to get information on how to protect ourselves while we are intubating patients that are vulnerable, suspected, and positive for the said virus. It was scary, but we have to stay informed and find ways to be innovative to our strategies. I have changed my techniques in every possible way just like an emergency possible tracheostomy patient that came to my room. The patient has angioedema of the throat. You can see the patient is not talking, swollen neck, coughing, producing a productive, yellow mucus. No test was done because of the emergency airway issue. So from Emergency Room this patient ended up in my room, scared and wearing a cardiac monitor on her chest, and phone on her waist. We tried to re-assure this patient that we are going to take care of her but we have to intubate her awake via her nose. If we are unable to place a breathing tube on her nose, then we have to do an emergency tracheostomy. The thought that we never knew at that time if this patient is positive or not, we protected ourselves on the necessity of the situation. Thank goodness we were able to nasally intubate this patient and transfer to ICU. I proceeded to do 6 more cases in a span of 6 hours wearing my N-95 mask. At the end of my 10-hour shift, my face is unrecognizable with the marks I got from the mask. It was an intense 10-hour shift and yes I am going to do it again tomorrow. I am going home to my family and continue distancing myself. My husband has another story on his shift and we come home and we do ourselves a favor to comfort each other. He tried to convince me to stay home and don’t go to work for if anything happens, we cannot afford to be sick at the same time. I clearly understand our family situation, but it is my duty to take care of my patient as well, for this is what we are trained for and the commitment I signed up for as a nurse.