LOS BANOS, Calif. — Half the state of California fell under stay-at-home orders on Sunday, Dec. 9, as ICU bed capacity dropped in hospitals from Southern California to the San Joaquin Valley.
One family is seeing the effects of getting medical care first hand as waiting rooms in ERs are flooded with people. Everyone in need of care, from heart attacks, strokes, personal injuries and now the COVID-19 pandemic, are overloading hospitals.
Cheryl and Vern Hixson, a therapist and Los Banos Elementary school teacher respectively, contracted COVID-19 just before Thanksgiving.
Both have done their due diligence masking up, working from home and staying socially distant. When teachers were forced to work from home, Vern and Cheryl had a tough time finding space for the two of them. That’s when Cheryl went to the office. She says they all had their own pods and only worked with two other people.
When one of Cheryl’s coworkers went home with a headache and fatigue, they thought it may just be a cold, but it was COVID-19. Cheryl kept her distance in another room of the house from her husband, but Vern soon fell ill. That’s when their daughter, Amy Duran, who is also a registered nurse, came in from Colorado to help.
“I felt like I was fairly well equipped to navigate COVID for my parents and I. It came as a huge surprise to me at how difficult it was to get the care that they needed,” Duran said.
Duran soon found out she would have a very difficult time caring for her parents. As a registered nurse, she travels the country to help other hospitals deal with the COVID-19 crisis.
“The resilience of the health care profession right now, shouldn't go unnoticed. I mean, there's people who are jumping into help. Who've been out of the nursing profession or out of the medical profession for a while. And I've come back in. There's also, you know, nurses who were labor delivery nurses who are now working in the ICU,” Duran said.
While she’s experienced the ins and outs of hospitals and the care these patients need, Amy couldn’t help her parents right away.
“I called anywhere from Stanford all the way down to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach to try and coordinate care for my parents. I was hoping to avoid the emergency room right now because they’re all full,” Duran said.
The biggest obstacle, aside from the overwhelmed hospitals, was the run around. Although Amy says she knew her dad just needed an oxygen tank at first, she was unable to get one from outpatient care or other urgent care facilities because he had tested positive for COVID-19. The protocols require these centers to send patients to the hospital, which only overwhelms hospitals more.
The only thing to do for COVID-19 patients is to wait hours in the ER for an ICU bed. Cheryl said she waited for over two days.
“I was in a hallway gurney and, you know, there's hustle and bustle. There’s, you know, nurses running, trying to take care of all of their patients. These nurses have like eight patients each, when they would normally have 4,” Cheryl said.
Cheryl slowly improved and was sent home from Clovis Community Hospital, but her husband Vern is still in intensive care on a ventilator.
“One of the hardest things I did was leave a hospital, knowing my husband was in the same hospital and not be able to see him,” Cheryl said.
As a family therapist, Cheryl often works with those facing post-partum depression. She says being in the hospital, whether it’s for COVID-19 or a car accident right now, is one of the loneliest things you can go through. Because of COVID-19, no one is allowed to be in a patient's room. A typical hospital stay would usually involve family comforting you and bringing you ice chips or cheering you up. This time around, Cheryl says that next hospital visit will be one you don’t want to go through.
The Hixsons' daughter Amy says during this time, it’s very important for other regions who are not under stay-at-home orders to realize “your access to care is limited, regardless of whether you cut your finger. Whether you’ve got a really bad flu this year, car accidents, your hospital is full, wherever you’re at in the country, your hospital is full,” Duran said.
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