Lol I wish. I have been calling Patrick’s office every day for the last two weeks trying to get him to come to the hospital and watch us intubate. It’s funny that his office has been closed and not returning any of my messages in that time.
oh that’s Dr. DellaVolpe. The guy is a straight G. Amazing physician. He provides lung bypass support to most of San Antonio. He’s on call all the time. I’m glad he’s vocally calling out the state heads as well.
thank you for your understanding. I don’t think I’ve done a good job explaining that resource utilization by covid means diminished and decreased care to non covids. one thing to note though is I don’t eat the cost for medical care. I’m an IcU physician so the hospital pays me. Depending on contracts it does make a difference if I see insurance or non insurance but for the most part IcU is hourly BECAUSR the large majority of patients can not pay their hospital bills. medicaid and Medicare pay jack ****. In the outpatient settings most physicians lose money seeing these patients. This is why so many physicians do not take either. But in the IcU there is a large population of people who are self pay and uninsured. Since you know uninsured people can get sick too. The large majority of ICU patients are actually one of these 3 insurance types. Even if you had insurance I’m not sure it would be enough to cover your entire medical bill since they only pay a proportion. So the cost of providing medicine is always, I imagine, thrown back to the population as a whole since the hospital writes it off. I don’t know Enough about hospital economics to know who is truly footing the bill but I know the majority if not all the people I see will not pay their bills because they cannot.
@BallaDoc First, let me day thank you for your service, and your stories from real life experience. Hopefully the truth of the situation will turn on the light to some people as to the importance of doing all they can right now to stay safe, protect themselves and others, and stop the spread the best they can. There is a huge difference between doing what is necessary to survive and going out partying and socializing mask free. If we can't afford to have groceries delivered then we have to risk going to stores, but we certainly don't need to go sit in a restaurant or bar to eat and drink. When I see these beach parties, boat parties, packed nightclubs and such on the news it is disturbing. This isn't the time to be selfish and ignorant. People can do more to stop the spread. The rallies and protests aren't helping either. I think people are just so frustrated, and so in need of change. The problem is that they are doing it all at the worst possible time, which is during a pandemic. As for the Trump rallies, well, as usual, it's becoming a mask free platform to downplay the seriousness of the virus, and encouraging rebellion against medical experts' advice and opinions. It's a dangerous form of leadership. There are some people on here who will refuse to admit or accept the truth, even from someone like you who is there first hand. They don't want to hear it. But, there are far more of us who do appreciate your posts and the work you do to save lives. Thank you. I was reading about the schizophrenic psychosis some patients with Covid-19 experience. Have you had patients who experience these horrifying delusions?
@BallaDoc what does your gut tell you about schools opening in the fall? Do you see any links in your patients with kids spreading the virus? I just know my personal experience with a little one. It’s how we catch everything. My wife being a teacher also compounds the insane amount of virus that enters our home. Even if precautions are high, I just don’t see how we won’t see cases go through the roof but it’s also crazy and sad to think about a world where kids can’t go to school for literally years.
@BallaDoc ; Do you mind if I share your post on FB? Your experience is important for more people to hear. I also think my friends who are in the medical field will be interested to hear your story as someone dealing with a current hotspot.
Thank you @BallaDoc for exposing @bigtexxx as the idiot troll that he is. He cannot refute any of your points as he has never seen the day to day of what emergency care workers have experienced during the last 3 months . He is talking out of his ass and is a joke.
Thank you @BallaDoc for your service. It's good to read stories first hand. My 75 year old grandmother tested positive. She was a presurgical test with no symptoms. She was going to have a heart ablation. She says she doesn't have it. Says her heart doc told her that because she has no symptoms and no fever, she's negative. Are there a lot of false positives going around? She's still going about her norm, as if she doesn't have it. That bothers me.
Keep posting and hang in there Balla. Thanks for your service. Often said as empty words by folks who could give a crap about veterans when they come back.
Thanks for all of your dedication and professional work on this. And thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with the rest of us.
Interestingly enough, the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending elementary kids to be in schools. They don't believe children contract or spread the virus that much, and child development is more important.
Did she get an antibody test? That has a lot of false positives. I've heard that the swab test is more accurate but it also has false positives and false negatives.
Thank you for your kind words. It does mean a lot to us to hear them. It humanizes the medicine again since our patients are intubated and non communicative and we have limited interaction now with families. I agree that covid was the perfect setup for the population to let loose their displeasure at the situation and the system. If I’m being honest we’ve been expecting a surge from reopening and then another surge from the protests. Whether it’s right or wrong to protest something as grave as inherent systematic racism during a pandemic is besides the point. We hope to be proven wrong but the disease is just so damn virulent. We’ve been expecting peak utilization day to hit around the 11th. to answer your question on schizophrenia psychosis. I think that is a very challenging diagnosis. When someone is not getting adequate oxygen or perfusion to the brain and are kept up all night from nurses and doctors panicking and waking them up in the middle of the night it makes diagnosing psychiatric complications challenging. At the root, from what I remember about psych, schizophrenia is mediated by dopamine pathways. I haven’t heard or read yet, not to say it doesn’t exist medicine is constantly fluxing, that covid directly affects the neurochemicla response. But again covid enacts intense inflammation and decreasing perfusion/oxygenation to all tissues of the body. That is essentially the pathway to most/all diseases in medicine. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it came out later that significant neuropsychiatric illness has been caused by it. As of now that is not something I have witnessed or read on. Sorry If I say idk a lot. There’s a vast reading list on this topic that I haven’t read on yet outside of pulmonary disease I try my best not to lie or make up stuff if I don’t know the literature behind it but will offer my insight and opinion.
I read that as well. Found it strange after reading about so many children and adults across Texas who tested positive in day care centers.
She had a swab. My son had a nasal swab in late February/ early March that was negative. With him being so young (2), we think it may have been a false negative. My wife is convinced he had it. We can't find anyone to do antibodies, though, to see if we had it. We all had mild symptoms. His were short lived, but moderate. Curious as to why we're not antibody testing, other than a low accuracy. Those people who are positive should be taking care of these patients. Would be nice to know if my pregnant wife has antibodies.
I think the developmental stuff is pretty huge, and also there is a vaccine crisis (just with COVID, I mean). Parents being scared to take their kids out, even to the doctor, means our overall vaccination rates have plummeted. Having kids go back to school would also mean getting their shots up to date. (Or that's my understanding.) But this fall is looking scary. I wish we had handled the first wave better.
