In New York, the curve has started to flatten—but the I.C.U.s are still full, and patients are still dying
The New Yorker’s Dhruv Khullar writes about life in New York ICU.
A woman and her husband are admitted to my ward; before the coronavirus, they were healthy, enjoying morning walks and evening cocktails. Now, while her breathing improves each day, his declines. By the end of the week, she is pacing the room, and he is on the brink of intubation.
Other couples go together. One evening, we transfer a woman in her eighties to hospice; her husband of fifty years joins her the next morning. His breathing is so labored that he can barely speak, but, between gasps, from behind an oxygen mask, he tells me that he can’t live without her. I can’t work out whether the virus was merciful or merciless in taking them both.
Why does the virus cripple some lungs and not others? There’s so much we don’t yet know.