Waiting For The Last Breath, The Struggle of COVID 19

Yovita Hartantri, Laniyati Hamijoyo

Internal Medicine Department Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung Indonesia

After almost 2 years living in pandemic in Indonesia, currently (August 17,2021) the cases reached 3,892,479 with 120,013 deaths due to COVID. June to July 2021 was the month with the most cases. It happened so suddenly caused difficult to get proper treatment for so many patients and this for sure increased the mortality.

Even though all treatment recommendations have been given, some patients still die, especially those with co-morbidities such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. As a physician who works in caring for COVID 19 infection patients during this pandemic is very hard, seeing many COVID patients struggling their life to fight this disease.  Being physician in the middle of the battle field to decide who will further be sent to the intensive care unit and who could receive the ventilator and who will not is like playing God, as if judging life or death.

Respiratory failure is the most common cause of death in COVID-19 infection, and some unfortunate patients do not receive a ventilator to support their breathing when it worsens. While visiting patients in intensive care, it was revealed some of them were still conscious but had difficulty talking; others were fighting to keep breathing. This COVID 19 case is unpredictable, some survive and others pass away. We would like to share the experience of accompanying our patients during their struggling for breath, with and without ventilator, waiting for their last breath. We noticed that most of the patients who did not survive appeared scare, panicked, uncooperative and denied or could not accept the situation, on the other hand, those who survived were calmer, more positive and able to accept their situation. More research is needed on this experience.

Presented in 17th AFCMA Congress 2021

URL: https://afcma2021.vfairs.com/