The coronavirus emerging in China continues to wreak havoc on the world. As of March 22, there are 308 thousand 535 cases and 13 thousand 69 casualties worldwide. One of the countries most affected by these cases and casualties is the United Kingdom. The UK is the 10th country with the highest number of cases and the 7th country with the highest number of casualties. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also made some remarks yesterday against citizens of the country. Asking people not to go out on the streets, Boris Johnson said, “Celebrate Mother’s Day with a remote video call. The number of heavy patients will increase like the tsunami. ” A doctor’s letter The Daily Mail newspaper published in the UK brought the letter written by a doctor to its readers. The doctor, whose name was not disclosed, said, “Have you seen someone fluttering to take their last breath? Not many people have seen it, but those who witness it never forget this horrible experience. I wish I could forget all the faces that lost their lives last week. “Panic on all faces, the voices that people make when trying to breathe helplessly, and not being able to fill their lungs with oxygen … These won’t stop you.” The doctor, who has been in his professional life for more than 10 years, said, “I thought I had seen everything after all this time, but nothing could have prepared me for the horror I experienced in the last week.” The entire letter written by the doctor is as follows; “The nightmare started at noon on Saturday. A notification came to me that a patient was experiencing respiratory failure, and I ran in the hospital and went to the Covid-19 patient in his 70s. Her heart stopped and there was a panic when I entered the room. Employees questioned what they did wrong and talked about how they should do it, even though they did not have their own mistakes. Even this situation revealed how unprepared we are for this virus threat as a country. It showed that the equipment was futile. As two nurses, a senior doctor and an anesthesiologist, Covid-19 brutally took a victim before our eyes. He was struggling to breathe. I saw that horror in your eyes. He knew. This horror was reflected in the staff in the room. The professionals there have been doing this for years, but they were all scared. I’m a senior doctor at a busy hospital in London. I’m used to working long shifts and helping those entering through the emergency gate. But last Saturday was different. We knew that a virus would come, but we weren’t prepared for it. After the first Covid-19 death in the hospital, we suddenly changed the shift system and working order within the hospital. I am a doctor and my inner voice is trained to silence the voice inside me in times of extreme stress. But this time I did not silence the voice inside me. He always said to me, “Oh my god, what’s going on?” We predicted that this patient would die. The child inside me said to me, “If I save him, other patients in the ward will be fine.” Of course, this is not a children’s story, but real life. As I cruelly slipped from my hand, my heart broke. There was no time to fight because the ward was full in a short time. A patient with a high fever passed out in front of me and all the beds were full. No doctors and nurses in the room were protected, including me. At this point, I was working hungry for 9 hours. There was no one to replace me, and the number of notifications increased rapidly as patients began to arrive. I started running to notifications from every point of the hospital. In every new case, the voice inside me says, “No, no, no, no. Please, God, he shouldn’t. ” For some reason, some of the people still do not understand the seriousness of this business. In a video shared on social media, he says Covid-19 is slightly worse than the flu. But let me tell you, this is much, much worse. The spread of the epidemic aside from causing liver diseases makes this different from other diseases. Many people reading this may think that the virus only affects ‘those with health problems’. This is a very clever term and so many of us are not afraid of it. But I saw first hand how this disease spread. I forgot how many patients I intervened in different parts of the hospital. After a point, you act instinctively when detecting the corona virus. You don’t have to make a mistake. Covid-19 does not immediately generate high fever. Suspecting that someone is a corona virus, we took it to another room and tested it. The duration of the test results is 2 days. This poses another logistics problem. Due to the suspicion of the virus, he is not taken to the normal hospital room, and due to the fact that he is not sick, Covid-19 is not taken with his patients. I also have no symptoms, but I often interact with patients. So I’m probably a carrier like many doctors in the country. According to the rules of the British Ministry of Health, doctors cannot test themselves until they show symptoms. You ask why? Because there are not enough employees. As a doctor, you must save lives. But for the first time in my career, I faced the fact that I was a silent killer as a doctor. I have no choice but to overcome this fear and fight. By the end of this week, we realized that we could not prevent this virus from spreading aggressively. Many patients do not respond to treatment or an oxygen mask, and we have no choice but to “relax” them. Despite morphine and sedatives, deaths are painful. So I want to wake up with the fact that this last week is a nightmare. But this is not a nightmare. This is our new reality. This virus forced us doctors to play a role we should never have, god. I knew that my job was irreversibly changed that Saturday. We, the doctors, had to decide who should live and who should die by making ethical decisions that we never had to face. These ethical decisions; I knew it was taken with time, patience and care. But last week was very fast. No doctor should be forced to choose among their patients. But we have no other choice. It is very difficult to tell someone that their mother, father, spouse or other relative has been taken into intensive care because of serious health problems, but there is nothing to be done. Families often ask the first answer to such a question, “How much time is left?” And then ask if they can see it. When a patient comes to the hospital with a critical condition, the virus only takes a few hours to kill him. In the past, we took the relatives of the patients into intensive care with specially protected clothing and equipment, but what will happen when the number of patients increases and there is a shortage of protective clothing and masks? Many times this week, patient relatives and their families could not accept the fate of their loved ones and asked us to continue fighting the virus. This dialogue takes place in your mind.
