Statistically and anecdotally, we know hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated COVID patients. We hear stories about healthcare workers feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by the fact that the unvaccinated make choices which negatively impact caregivers. We realize understaffing is a byproduct of this problem, as healthcare workers quit the profession or reduce hours to cope with their fatigue and despondency.
However, we don’t hear enough about how the unvaccinated filling our hospitals impacts those who are vaccinated, boosted and following the advice of public health experts. This becomes painfully apparent during a non-COVID-related medical emergency.
Last month, my 21-year old daughter began having abdominal pain and vomiting. Fortunately, she was still home from college so I could help her assess the situation and call her doctor. She ended up going to the emergency room, with her doctor noting that ER’s are experiencing long wait times. We arrived at the ER at 1 a.m. and saw many other individuals in the waiting room.
Credit: Parker Smith
Credit: Parker Smith
Due to COVID protocols, I was not allowed to stay with my daughter, though they graciously allowed me to come in from the parking lot periodically to comfort her and replace her airsick bag. As she moaned, writhed and dry-heaved, I reassured her that any minute, she would be taken back to the ER, given medicine and a bed and allowed to rest.
Any minute turned into four hours. Weak and dizzy, she was taken back by the ER doctor and I resorted to texting her from my car. Within an hour, my daughter was given morphine, anti-nausea medication, fluids and a CAT scan.
She told me the scan confirmed the ER doc’s suspicion: appendicitis. She also said she felt better and that she was sitting on a non-reclining chair in the ER. There were no ER beds available. Over the next several hours, I texted her to “stay on top of the pain” and request meds before they were necessary.
Although she said the nurses were very kind, she had trouble flagging them down for meds. Connected to an IV and still vomiting from pain, she would sometimes walk to find a nurse, placing her weight on the IV stand while trying not to pass out before making it back to her chair.
After several hours, the surgeon visited my daughter. They called me so I could hear the conversation. There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that he would be performing the appendectomy later that afternoon. The bad news was that the hospital was full of COVID patients, so my daughter could not get admitted and would not have a bed. Also, out of 20 operating rooms, only one was staffed, so her time slot was dependent on the number of other emergency surgeries. All we could do was wait.
As she agonized in her chair, the pain and nausea worsened to the point where even with double the pain meds and a different anti-nausea med, she was still in extreme pain and dry-heaving. She later told me she was going downhill, didn’t have the strength to text, heard the nurse notifying the surgeon and just wanted to be put out of her misery.
Finally, at 4 p.m., 13 hours after taking my daughter to the ER, I received a call that she was in surgery. I would drive through to pick her up after she spent the required time in recovery.
Needless to say, I was filled with gratitude and joy when I saw my daughter again that evening. She was able to come home and lay down in a bed.
Over the next day, as her anesthesia wore off, we talked about her experience. She asked to write thank-you notes to her nurses and doctors who were stretched so thin but were still nice to her. When her friends heard of her experience, some of them shared their stories of appendicitis.
When a hospital is not full of unvaccinated people, patients needing emergency surgery get beds with curtains for privacy in the ER, they move to more comfortable rooms when admitted and they have advocates or staff proactively managing the pain.
During the 17 hours my daughter was in the hospital, I oscillated between hope and despair. I felt privileged to live in a country where modern medicine could save my daughter from a ruptured appendix, but despair that she could not access the healthcare she deserved.
My bitterness for the unvaccinated taking up hospital rooms, while she writhed in a chair, didn’t dissipate for days. When I told my friends the story, they suggested I share it more widely. They said that even if it only encouraged one unvaccinated person to get vaccinated, that could be one more hospital bed available for someone else’s child.
I know the unvaccinated don’t believe they are the ones who will end up in a hospital bed, but statistically they are. Surely, they don’t mean to take a bed from someone suffering in acute pain. But that is exactly what is happening.
Allyson Gevertz is a longtime public education advocate. She is a school psychologist by training, but now serves on the DeKalb County Board of Education. She wrote this as a personal parental observation, not as a school board member.
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