In intensive care, we expect to receive a lot from the caregivers.
But not a chocolate nun.
It was brought to Brahim on Tuesday evening.
It's unusual, but surely not as much as waking up in a sheave on your 40th birthday.
"Today is my birthday, and my greatest gift is to breathe," he slips, his eyes cloudy.
Because the Covid-19 virus prevents it from achieving this on its own, a machine takes over.
"The Optiflow", specify the doctors.
Hoses connected to his nostrils to deliver high flow oxygen, and prevent intubation of the father.
He knows he owes him his salvation, but that night he was afraid of the breath that rustles in his ears.
Here, like Brahim, only half of the 22 victims of the coronavirus in critical care are conscious.
In Saint-Etienne, the Private Hospital of the Loire (HPL) has emptied all its services on the second floor to create a large 100% Covid platform, where you enter ultra-equipped and leave through a dedicated airlock.
The sheave went from eight to thirty-five beds.
As early as September, her boss, Janson Gassia, felt the tide and ordered new respirators.
He had a hollow nose: a few weeks later, the epidemic outbreak set on fire in the Loire department, and all of Rhône-Alpes, the now capital of the Covid where patients continue to flow.
928 occupy this Wednesday the 1,130 intensive care beds open in the region, which is twice the usual capacity.
Public-private cooperation
“We are all sails out.
Our fear is to run out of space, continues Janson Gassia.
So, even more than in the huge Parisian structures, we must always look for cunning, innovation.
This is what keeps our heads above water.
"To keep this tiny" head start ", the hospitals - public and private - of the department have put aside their competition in favor of an unprecedented system of cooperation, communicating with each other every day, via meetings or WhatsApp threads. on their availability, and their medical practices.
Several dozen medical evacuations took place to Bordeaux, Angers, Saint-Nazaire… but intra-regional transfers also take place every day.
Like this affable sixty-something with a white beard, transferred from Roanne, an hour's drive away.
Doctor Denis Muller, affected by Covid-19, in the intensive care unit of Saint-Etienne hospital./LP/Arnaud Dumontier
"Hello Doctor Muller", launches the resuscitator Laurent Gergelé, entering his room.
While still in practice, Denis Muller helped to create an emergency service in the Roanne region.
This time, it is as a patient that he rubs shoulders with resuscitation, infected by the one he baptized "the Sly".
"I'm better today," he says to his colleague.
To calm his anxieties, the carers made him do hypnosis which allowed him to escape into paintings by Magritte and Gauguin.
“This is a successful example of a mix between the teams.
We did not know about hypnosis in sheaves, but it was an operating room nurse who came as a backup who suggested it, ”enthuses Laurent Gergelé.
City doctors to the rescue
"What is extraordinary are the bridges, everyone is doing it", abounds Jean-Yves Grall.
The director of the Regional Health Agency is thinking in particular of the opening in a neighboring hospital of 20 intermediate care beds, the responsibility of which has been entrusted to town doctors.
Brahim, he did not imagine that the virus could be so overwhelming.
With his wife, he lives upstairs above his parents.
How did the evil circulate?
Impossible to say.
But at the same time, he and his mother were admitted to intensive care, his father, to an infectious disease department.
“It's an adventure, so deep, so crazy, he is moved.
I don't wish it on anyone.
"