All the anti-vaxx morons here need to read this and then think about how blinkered (or manipulative) they are.
In the ICU where only Maria is vaccinated, others die in disbeliefBy Melissa CunninghamNovember 6, 2021 — 11.30pm
In the middle of a row of unconscious coronavirus patients, Maria Roessen is a rare and wondrous sight.
The 66-year-old is dressed in a pale blue hospital gown and sitting perched up in a chair in Sunshine Hospital’s intensive care unit under a bubble-shaped plastic hood with monitors attached to her chest and a tube hanging under her nose.
Maria Roessen in Sunshine Hospital’s intensive care unit.CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
She is weary-eyed, ashen faced and wearing a pair of bright orange and white socks.
“It’s been hell,” she says, pausing to take another deep, wheezy breath. “I thought I was going to my maker.”
As Victorians revel in newfound freedom following the world’s longest lockdown, behind the sealed off doors at the hospital’s COVID-19 ICU unit, the care is relentless.
But healthcare workers here are no longer just fighting a war against coronavirus, they are now battling a never-ending scourge of misinformation about the disease.
Increasingly, the vast majority filling the hospital are severely ill unvaccinated people, some who remain adamant that COVID-19 does not exist even when they are succumbing to the virus.
Inside Sunshine Hospital's Intensive Care Unit Sunshine Hospital intensive care unit nurse manager Samantha Angiolella explains how their unit works.
Others come to the realisation too late that the deadly virus is real, begging for a vaccine before being hooked up to a ventilator, unsure whether they will regain consciousness.“It has been incredibly challenging and distressing,” Western Health intensive care director Craig French said.
“Patients and their families have expressed the belief that they don’t have COVID, it’s not real to them, even though they are critically ill or somebody they love is very, very sick.”
Director of intensive care at Western Health, Professor Craig French.CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
On Thursday afternoon, Ms Roessen was the only patient in the coronavirus ICU ward who was well enough to be interviewed when
The Sunday Age visited.
She was also the hospital’s first patient to be admitted to the intensive care ward who had been fully vaccinated, something she is certain saved her life.
She suspects it was her “bad lungs” weakened by a previous pulmonary embolism, which left her critically ill, when the virus invaded her body.
'Get vaccinated': COVID patient Maria Roessen
COVID-19 patient Maria Roessen was double-vaccinated and had a previous health condition which led her to Sunshine Hospital ICU. She believes without her vaccination, she'd be dead.
She was taken to hospital by ambulance 10 days ago. Her husband and daughter, both infected with the virus and fully vaccinated, quickly recovered at home.
“If I had not been double vaccinated I would be dead. There are no two ways about it,” Ms Roessen says as a nurse takes her blood pressure.
“It was very scary. The staff here are angels. There are no words for them.”
Western Health treated the most Victorians infected with COVID-19 in the state last year. But the virulent Delta variant has meant staff have treated more coronavirus patients in recent months than the whole of 2020.
And there are more to come, in the order of 1100 COVID-19 patients, who could be in hospital by late December or early January, according to modelling provided by the Burnet Institute.
Maria Roessen is being tended to by ICU nurse Montana McQuade.CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
On Thursday, there were nine critically ill coronavirus patients in Sunshine Hospital’s ICU, most aged between 40 and 60, but the youngest in their 30s.
Another eight critically ill patients were at nearby Footscray Hospital, while almost 50 others filled other coronavirus wards.
A nurse is at the end of each bed in the ICU, dressed in a plastic face shield, pale blue gown and fitted face-mask, carefully observing a computer screen monitoring vitals.
‘Not sustainable’: Dozens of COVID-19 patients missing from ICU figuresSome patients are ventilated and lying on their bellies as colourful tubes attached to them stretch out to machines humming softly nearby. Others are bare-chested on their backs, beneath a sea of monitors, their feet dangling out the end of the bed.
There is a tiny resuscitation table for newborn babies in the corner of the ward following a surge in pregnant, unvaccinated women being admitted, putting them and their unborn babies in heightened danger of severe outcomes.
The pressure is being felt in every corner of the hospital. Western Health’s critical care outreach service manager, Kylie Fisher, is overseeing the complex daily logistics of managing other seriously ill people.
This involves prioritising only the sickest people for urgent surgeries. Meanwhile, a team of intensive care physicians tend to the seriously ill outside the ICU - something that would have been almost unheard of pre-pandemic.
“They feel like they’ve got their finger in the dike and the moment they move it, the flood could start,” she said. “They are still providing incredible care, but they have been very, very crucial in managing the higher acuity on a general ward.”
Nurses who usually work in operating theatres have been trained up and re-deployed to the COVID-19 ICU.
ICU nurse Louise Watson says nothing prepared her for looking after COVID-19 patients.CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
Among them is critical care nurse Louise Watson, who returned to the ICU six weeks ago. While the senior nurse has cared for countless patients with pneumonia over the years, nothing prepared her for COVID-19. It is the primal and desperate hunger for air that is etched in her mind.
“These people are just so severely depleted of oxygen they are literally gasping for air,” she said.
Inside Sunshine Hospital's COVID-19 ICU ward“They have such panic in their eyes. What we are having to tolerate in terms of oxygen levels that patients are experiencing is something I have never seen before.
“It can be any demographic, any age, if people are unvaccinated, they can get severely ill from COVID.”
Victoria’s Health Department revealed on Friday that 95 percent of those in ICU with COVID-19 were not fully vaccinated.
Professor French said many had chosen not to be vaccinated due to their beliefs. These values are often shared by the patients’ families, making clinical conversations about life-saving treatments extremely difficult.
Some families have expressed a desire to shun conventional medicine, while other families request dangerous and unproven drug treatments they have read about online. Others find it hard to comprehend how much their loved one has deteriorated on FaceTime calls after having not seen them become increasingly sicker in the ICU.
ICU physiotherapists move a coronavirus patient onto their stomach. CREDIT:JUSTIN MCMANUS
Irrespective of their vaccination status or beliefs about the virus, the professor at the department of critical care at the University of Melbourne said every COVID-19 patient receives the best care possible.
“We do not judge, we just get on with the job,” he said. “I am extremely proud of how hard the staff work every day.”
However, he said the abuse his staff have endured from the families of those severely ill with the disease, who believe the COVID-19 is a conspiracy, has taken a heavy toll. Psychologists have been called in to the ICU weekly to support healthcare workers.
Hospital at home, elective surgery still on hold as health system braces for COVID surge“The level of verbal assault our clinical staff have been exposed to in the last six to eight weeks is something I have never, ever experienced in my career,” the intensive care physician said.
“The misinformation, the belief this isn’t real, the absolute distress they are experiencing when their relatives are critically unwell makes it very, very difficult to have a conversation with them about how we can help them because what they’re requesting is often not consistent with the medical advice.”
But the gratitude of some families remains profound. One recently sent in dozens of kebabs to feed staff who were caring for their loved one.
Despite the challenges, those on the frontline work tirelessly and with military precision. Late Thursday, nurses gently reassured patients as they tended to them, while a crowd of doctors gathered around the nurse’s station carefully examining chest X-rays.
Lungs that look white as bone indicate there are virtually no air-filled spaces for the patient to breathe. This influences treatment, such as proning, which involves up to eight staff turning ventilated patients onto their stomach to open up their airways.
Ms Roessen is hopeful she will be discharged next week. Others will not be so lucky.
“There are members of Melbourne’s western suburbs that are not going home to their families and that is a tragedy we all struggle with,” Professor French said.
“These are people’s mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children.”
“Even if they do survive, they’re never going to be the same again after such a severe critical illness.”
At the end of the ICU ward, a frail man with shrunken cheeks lies in a hospital bed after having his ventilator removed only hours earlier.
He has been in intensive care for weeks. His kidneys are failing and his ribcage protrudes beneath grey-tinged skin. He is restless, like he is in the middle of a bad dream.
“He is improving a little bit every day,” Professor French said. “But he has a very long road ahead.”
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