Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

There's a very important lesson I have learned from church: in confrontations, it is less antagonistic to share personal experiences than to share doctrinal arguments. I'm going to apply that to COVID-19, because for illogical reasons, it is a controversial topic. Is it going to answer every question about SARS-CoV-2? No. Are my experiences representative of those of healthcare professions across the country? Probably not. But hey, this is a blog, not a medical journal. Treatment Since the second week of May, I've been working with the Infectious Disease (ID) division, primarily to help out with COVID-19 patients. In the first week or two, all we had for treatment was tocilizumab (to stop a 'cytokine storm', which is an overexcited immune system making things way too hard on the body). It doesn't affect the actual virus at all. And is only helpful if you actually have a cytokine storm. And ok, technically, we also had convalescent plasma (antibodies from the b...

The other day at work, one of the patients I was following as part of the Infectious Disease consult team had an interesting convergence of current and "rudimentary" medical treatment. He had an infection [hopefully you figured that part out, since the ID team was consulted] in his foot that would not be cleared by antibiotics alone. Why? Because he had necrotic (aka dead/rotting) tissue that the bacteria would hang out in. If the tissue is dead, that means it doesn't have blood circulation to it anymore, which means any antibiotic we gave him--either intravenously or orally--would not reach where the bacteria were hiding. And it was most definitely not something that can be cured with Neosporin. The necessary cure? Cut off the dead tissue. Which usually takes multiple trips to the operating room, since we'd like to only remove unsalavageable tissue, which is a developing process--we watch for what heals and what doesn't. The alternative for becoming an OR frequen...