Just a year ago, Dominican doctor Wendy Jorge Rodríguez treated the first person infected with coronavirus in the Spanish region of Extremadura (west), where he works, a man from Perales del Puerto (province of Cáceres) who came from Italy with fatigue and cough. .
“The unknown leads to insecurity, but my job is to save lives,” a goal that does not allow to turn into fear, reflects by heart the 40-year-old doctor from the Dominican Republic, who is also in the US and South worked. Africa, until he reached the town of Hoyos (Cáceres).
On February 28, 2020, Dr. Wendy on duty at the Continuing Care Point (PAC) in that municipality. Hours earlier, he had attended an optional meeting to discuss various aspects related to a virus that, he admits, “sounded a little distant” at the time … in China, in Italy.
When the clock struck 3:45 PM (2:15 PM GMT), he told EFE, a man, accompanied by his wife, arrived at the health center to be treated for “a general malaise over several days.”
After hearing the initial explanation of the symptoms, “not all alarms went off, but I chose to put on the mask,” he says.
However, when the woman told her that her husband, a truck driver by trade, had just arrived from Italy, “what I thought was something distant and unknown became something very close: what I saw on the news lay before me.”
UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR
Thanks to these initial protocol guidelines for this infection, which were addressed at the previous medical meeting, the physician put on personal protective equipment (PPE) and began examining the patient.
The fever and breathing problems came along with the cough and that general malaise for which this truck driver, who had traveled several “coronavirus red zones” in Italy, had been taking paracetamol for a few days.
He activated the care protocol, the medical director of Health came and the patient was transferred by ambulance to a hospital. The patient left, “but the uncertainty persisted,” said Wendy Jorge, an asthmatic who at the time wondered if those first minutes without a mask had been enough to infect him.
While he was isolated in his home for 15 days – he never told his Dominican family not to worry – and he underwent a diagnostic PCR test, which was negative. The outpatient clinic was thoroughly cleaned.
“What would that initial uncertainty be like, that a general cleaner, who saw so many prevention devices and people with PID, quit her job,” she explains to reflect the anxiety some people have.
SAVE ALL LIVES FIRST
Yet this Dominican doctor at the time was not under the impression that a year later more than three million infections and about 69,000 deaths would occur in Spain.
“Unfortunately and at the same time fortunately we have learned a lot about the pandemic in these 12 months, from caring for these types of patients to what to do in terms of safety and protocols to prevent contamination.” “If the carer doesn’t take care of himself, it’s useless,” he adds.
Chance, as he puts it, wanted one or two days after returning to work that the second positive person for covid-19 in Hoyos be treated by him as well. A woman in her eighties who needed intensive care, but ‘got ahead’.
“These people are an example of the struggle for life and those who give us the push we need to continue on the front lines. Our job is to save lives and we owe it to ourselves,” he notes with confidence and dedication. on.
VERY CRITICAL WITH NEGATIONISTS
Convinced of the effectiveness of vaccines, Dr. Wendy very critical of the pandemic deniers. “They don’t know what it’s like to gasp for oxygen, feel like they are drowning or losing a loved one … they arouse – he adds – disappointment in humans.”
There are also those who “demand everything” (all necessary health care) to the consultation hour after reporting that they “come from a dinner” or from a place where they have not put on the mask.
The doctor concludes with a message to those who criticize Spanish public health: “What we have here is not appreciated enough. In Spain, the patient’s life comes first; in many countries, the first thing you have to pay is. and then, and if so, means that the sick are taken care of. ”