Politics

Listen To This Doctor Describe The Lonely Reality Of Being Seriously Ill With COVID-19

"If you’re tempted to leave the house unnecessarily or having a hard day at home, remember the grim reality of COVID-19 described by Dr Lucy Morgan."

by Rachael Conaghan  7 April 2020
dr lucy morgan, Q&A, coronavirus

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Over the last few months we’ve heard a lot of numbers being thrown around on coronavirus. There are at least 5,844 Australians infected with COVID-19. Forty-two of those have died. That’s nothing on the global figures — worldwide 1.3 million people have contracted the virus and more than 74,000 people have lost their lives.

Those are big numbers, and it’s easy to forget they represent more than that — they represent mothers, fathers, children and grandparents, people who have left behind loved ones who didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye.

Due to the highly contagious nature of the disease, and strict quarantine measures, visitors have been banned from many hospitals around the world.

Q&A host Hamish McDonald grimly summed it up: “It can be a very lonely death”.

Last night the program spoke to frontline health workers who are bracing themselves for an explosion of seriously ill coronavirus patients.

One guest was Dr Lucy Morgan, a respiratory physician looking after patients in NSW’s Nepean Hospital.

While we’ve been comforted by the fact that many coronavirus patients receive symptoms similar to the flu, unfortunately most of the patients she treats have had a very different outcome.

“They can’t breathe. Every breath that they take is increasingly difficult,” she said of patients who end up in hospital.

“As you get sicker and sicker, your oxygen levels are dropping and dropping, and you need more and more support. There comes a point where that support cannot be delivered at a ward level and a rapidly deteriorating patient with COVID-19 is a critical emergency.”

Critically ill patients with COVID-19 require ventilators, and Dr Morgan explained what that process was like.

“You have a tube put into your airways, and a machine breathes for you. And then as this COVID-19 infection progresses all sorts of parts of the body start to shut down.

“Once you’re in intensive care and you have a tube breathing for you … you’re not conscious. You’re asleep, you’re deeply sedated, your family can’t talk to you.

“All of this is requiring enormous nursing intervention, huge amount of nursing support and medical support.”

We already know that the respiratory illness affects the lungs, but as oxygen levels get lower it also starts to affect other essential organs like the heart and kidneys.

Dr Morgan also said the number of visitors allowed into hospitals is kept to a minimum to try and prevent transmissions, and that separation was one of the most devastating part of the illness.

“So yes, (it’s) a very lonely way to be very sick,” she said.

It’s a scary prospect, but luckily Australia has so far suppressed it a better than other countries like China, Italy and the US have.

That’s due to the social distancing laws we’ve put in place to try and stop the spread and flatten the curve.

So the next time you want to whinge about the beaches being shut or the pub being closed, picture someone you know hooked up to one of the ventilators we’re desperately trying to source more of.

And for those people still putting up Insta stories with a bunch of friends where you’re all obviously ignoring those social distancing rules — just know we’re all judging you for it.