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Well Being

ER doctor in Canada writes 'climate change' on patient's chart in an unprecedented diagnosis

Photo by kerry rawlinson on Unsplash

Climate change is causing record-breaking heat and intense wildfire seasons, worsening health issues.

As record-breaking heat and out-of-control wildfires raged in the beautiful Canadian province of British Columbia this past summer, people started arriving to the emergency room of Kootenay Lake Hospital with symptoms of heat illness.

Dr. Kyle Merritt, the head of the emergency department, told the Times Colonist that most of the doctors at the hospital had only seen such heat illness in medical school. Now they found themselves with a flood of it as the temperatures rose.

"We were having to figure out how do we cool someone in the emergency department," said Merritt. "People are running out to the Dollar Store to buy spray bottles."

A patient arrived who was struggling to breathe. The smoke from the wildfires in the area hadn't lifted for days, and the patient's asthma was being aggravated by it.

Merritt took the patient's chart and wrote two words he'd never written on a chart before: "climate change."

When asked why he did it, Merritt said, "If we're not looking at the underlying cause, and we're just treating the symptoms, we're just gonna keep falling further and further behind."

"It's me trying to just...process what I'm seeing," he said. "We're in the emergency department, we look after everybody, from the most privileged to the most vulnerable, from cradle to grave, we see everybody. And it's hard to see people, especially the most vulnerable people in our society, being affected. It's frustrating."

Merritt said a woman in her 70s who lived in a trailer with no air-conditioning had come into the ER. She was struggling to stay hydrated, and the heat was exacerbating her other health conditions, including diabetes and some heart failure. Patients like her, with multiple health problems and little money, will be the most affected by the climate crisis.

However, we're all seeing that there's no escaping its impact. Hundreds died during this summer's heat dome in western Canada and the northwestern United States. An entire Canadian village was wiped out by wildfire as temperatures reached a record 121 degrees this summer. We've been told for years that climate change would result in more extreme weather events, and here we are.

Merritt said he hoped seeing "climate change" on the patient's chart would prompt other doctors who see it one day to make the connection between their patients' health and climate change.

Extreme weather affects more than people's physical health. Merritt says he saw a number of patients already suffering from depression or anxiety have their symptoms worsen during the wildfire season. Wildfire smoke even triggered flashbacks in a patient who was coping with post-traumatic stress disorder from his time as a soldier.

The World Health Organization calls climate change "the single biggest health threat facing humanity" and health professionals worldwide are responding. Doctors and nurses in western Canada held a climate rally at the B.C. Legislature organized by Doctors for Planetary Health—West Coast on November 4. The healthcare workers are calling on lawmakers to act in the face of the growing ecological threat to health and demanding that the provincial government declare a climate and ecological emergency.

Writing "climate change" on a patient's chart may be unprecedented, but so are the times in which we live. If we are going to keep breaking records each year and keep seeing health-affecting extremes in temperature and weather events, we're going to have to do unprecedented things. Doctors and nurses are on the front lines, seeing those health impacts firsthand.

Perhaps we should listen to them.

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Well Being

Oregon hospital offers its weary healthcare heroes a room to rage-smash dinner plates

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

When Salem Hospital healthcare workers are feeling stressed, the hospital's wellness department usually recommends yoga or deep breathing. But a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new surge of hospitalizations driven by people who refuse to utilize the freely available vaccine underway, healthcare workers are beyond stressed. They're wiped out, cried out, and burnt out—and yoga and deep breaths just aren't cutting it anymore.

To give employees an outlet for their frustrations, Salem Hospital set up a "rage room" area where workers can take out their anger by throwing dinner plates at a wall.

A Salem Hospital nurse named Lisa told AP News that she and her colleagues had hoped this Delta wave wouldn't hit, but it has. "And it's harder and worse, way worse, than before," she said. Right now they have 15 patients on ventilators and people dying in the ICU.

She said she has made ample use of the plate-smashing booth.

"We put on safety glasses, and we took plates and we shattered them. And I kept going back. I kept going back, and they told me I had enough turns."

That's right. Our healthcare workers are resorting to smashing plates in a rage room because people's refusal to get vaccinated is making work hell for them. Throwing a plate at a wall is a far better option than throwing a bedpan at a patient, and controlled acts of destruction may prevent a doctor or nurse at their wit's end from taking out their anger and exhaustion in an unhealthy way. But seriously? This is what we've come to?

Get it together, America. We're in a global freaking pandemic and we have a readily available vaccine that is very effective at keeping people out of the hospital. This really isn't complicated.

This new wave of hospitalizations is even happening in Oregon, which has fared comparatively well in the pandemic thus far. Implementing some of the strictest mitigation measures in the nation has resulted in some of the lowest COVID rates in the nation, and vaccination rates overall there are high. But those high rates are a bit skewed by certain counties. Some Oregon counties are still barely pushing 50% fully vaccinated, and combined with low levels of immunity from previous COVID infections (the ironic downside of having managed the pandemic well so far) the Delta surge is filling up hospitals. Since Oregon and Washington tie for the lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita in the U.S., there's not a ton of wiggle room for a wave of hospitalizations.

Things are even worse for healthcare workers in states with lower vaccination rates. Hospitals are full and they're filling up with patients younger and healthier than in previous waves. As Charles Fox, MD, chief medical officer for Ochsner/LSU Health System of North Louisiana says, "The new risk factor is, 'I'm not vaccinated.'"

Remember when we all rallied behind our healthcare heroes when we didn't know how to help them? Now we know how to help them.

Remaining unvaccinated may be a "personal choice," but it's one that affects everyone around you. You are more likely to get COVID, which means you're more likely to spread it and keep the pandemic raging. If you do get COVID, you're more likely to be hospitalized, which puts a strain on hospitals and healthcare workers. And when hospitals fill up with COVID patients, that prevents people with other urgent medical care needs from getting help, so your choice impacts them, too.

We have full hospitals and healthcare heroes throwing plates at walls, folks. Give them a break and get vaccinated.


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Mama cat rushed her kitten with an eye infection into a hospital and 'asked for help'

Gulf Today/Facebook

A family of kittens in western Turkey has won people's hearts with an emergency visit to a hospital.

Not an animal hospital—a human hospital. And it wasn't a pet owner who brought them in, but the mama cat herself.

According to Gulf Today, staff had previously left food and water for the stray orange tabby outside the Izmer, Turkey hospital, but that morning she kept meowing outside. Finally, she fetched one of her kittens and carried it right into the hospital, clearly on a mission. She wasn't scared or shy as hospital personnel cleared the path for her. With her baby in her mouth, she trotted through the hallways, seemingly looking for someone to help.

Medical personnel examined the kitten along with its siblings and consulted with a veterinary clinic.

As it turned out, the kittens had an eye infection. Mama kitty's maternal instincts are really something else. Just look at this sweetness caught on video:

According to the Daily Mail, one of the hospital workers told local media: "We were giving food and water to the mother cat living on the street with other people living in this area. However, we did not know that she gave birth to kittens.

"As we began to receive patients in the morning, she showed up with her kittens. She asked for help, meowing for a long time. We were shocked.

"Upon careful examination, we saw that the kittens were not able to open their eyes due to infection.

"We consulted with veterinarians and gave medicine as described. When the kittens opened their eyes a short time later, we were thrilled.

"Later, we sent the mother cat and kittens to Uzundere for further care. This is the first time something like this has happened to us. We were emotional and delighted to see that they recovered well."

This isn't the first time that a mama cat has made news for bringing her kittens into a hospital in Turkey, however. Last spring, a different cat brought her kitten into an emergency room at a hospital in Istanbul. Merve Özcan described the scene in Twitter posts that went viral at the time.

"Today we were in the hospital emergency, a cat rushed to the emergency with her baby she was carrying in her mouth," Özcan wrote. "Her baby is a little mischievous, her mother grabs it where she finds it."

Medics looked over the kitten for obvious signs of illness, while mama cat was given milk and food. Then they were sent to a vet.

"The Turks have long been known for their love and care for stray animals," Bored Panda reported, "with many leaving out food and water for them on the streets."

No wonder these cats felt so comfortable bringing their kittens into human hospitals for help.

While we can't know for certain what prompted these mama kitties to bring their babies to these medical professionals, it's clear that their maternal instinct to protect and keep their kittens healthy is strong. And the fact that they seem to trust the hospital personnel to take care of their babies says a lot about how humans have treated them. Good for these Turkish medical workers for setting an inspiring example of kindness to animals.

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An ER nurse describes patients denying they have COVID—even while they're dying from it

New Day/Twitter, Jodi Doering/Twitter

Eight months into the coronavirus pandemic and it feels like disinformation and denial have spread as quickly as the virus itself. Unfortunately, disinformation and denial during a pandemic is deadly. Literally. People who refuse to accept the reality we're living in, who go about daily life as if nothing unusual were happening, who won't wear a mask or keep their distance from people, are preventing communities from being able to keep the pandemic under control—with very real consequences.

An ER nurse in South Dakota shared her experience treating COVID patients—some of whom refuse to believe they have COVID—and it's really shocking. One might think that the virus would become real to people if they were directly affected by it, but apparently that's just not true for some. As Jodi Doering wrote on Twitter:

"I have a night off from the hospital. As I'm on my couch with my dog I can't help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don't believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that 'stuff' because they don't have COViD because it's not real. Yes. This really happens. And I can't stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn't going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It's like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There's no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again."


Doering's Twitter post went viral, and CNN's New Day invited her to come on the show. Her interview is stunning and sad, as she explains how patients who should be spending their final hours talking with their loved ones spend them ranting about how the virus is all a hoax.

"I think the hardest thing to watch," she said, "is that people are still looking for something else and they want a magic answer and they don't want to believe COVID is real. And the reason I tweeted what I did was it wasn't one particular patient, it's just a culmination of so many people. And their last dying words are 'This can't be happening. It's not real." And when they should be spending time Facetiming their families, they're filled with anger and hatred, and it just made me really sad the other night. I just can't believe that those are going to be their last thoughts and words."

Doering explained that nurses can handle people lashing out at them in anger (bless you, nurses) but when they ask patients if they want to Facetime their families when they are clearly not likely to recover and they refuse, it's just sad.

"I think people look for anything," she said, when asked what people think is wrong with them if they don't believe it's COVID. "People want it to be influenza, they want it to be pneumonia...we've even had people say 'Well I think it might be lung cancer.' I mean, something so far fetched, and the reality is, since day one when COVID started in this area in March, you've kind of been able to say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck...even after positive results come back, some people don't believe it."

Doering made it clear that not all patients are living—and dying—in such denial. But the deniers are memorable. "It's just a movie where the credits never roll," she said. "You just do it all over again. And it's hard and sad because every hospital, every nurse, every doctor in this state is seeing the same things. These people get sick in the same way, you treat them the same way, they die in the same way, and then you do it over again."

The medical community has learned a lot about how to treat the virus, and Doering says they are managing their patient load fairly well. But the numbers keep climbing. South Dakota has a 50% positivity rate, which is astronomical. (The CDC guidance on school reopenings recommended that schools should only consider opening when positivity rates are below 3%, for a frame of reference.)

The virus is real, the pandemic is real, the illnesses and hospitalizations are real, and the deaths are real. We've got to figure out a way to pull deniers back to reality for everyone's sake, including their own.

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