MDA israel

“When my grandchildren ask me what I remember most, I will tell them about the day I stood dressed in full PPE, losing a patient after patient to an invisible enemy”

Shortly after 8 am, we are called for a confirmed corona patient with severe difficulty breathing. The patient is hospitalized in an emergency hospital which is situated in an underground bomb shelter. It was set up to deal with the all-out war we are facing.

While on our way to the incident, we hear ambulance after ambulance looking for a hospital which will take their patients and they are sent far from the city to Ichilov, Belinson, Tel Hashomer, or maybe not because they are also full. Dispatch tells us that if our patient is unstable and in life threatening condition, we cannot take them to a hospital in Jerusalem, but that the managers will do their best to try and help us be able to take them to the closest hospital. 

It’s not that they don’t want to receive patients, it’s simply that they can’t. They don’t have anywhere to put another patient. They don’t have any space on the floor. They don’t have another bed in the ICU. I know that they want to help, I have known these people for years and know how much their patients matter to them. They want to, but they simply can’t. 

We enter a large hall, there are lines of beds lining the walls with patients lying there in various states of consciousness and respiratory states, there are medical professionals in PPE from head to toe who are practically running from patient to patient. 

Our patient is lying there unresponsive, using every ounce of strength to bring in air to his failing lungs despite the illness. But he is powerless against it. 

We perform CPR alongside the team at this facility, all of us together are doing CPR when we know there is little chance of success. How can we give up? He’s only 73 and came in a couple of days ago on his own two feet.

Time of death is called. 

Baruch Dayan Emet.