Desperate and helpless, doctor Marcos Fonseca Barbosa chose to treat his mother, who was seriously ill with coronavirus, at home. The wait to hospitalize her in Manaus, in northern Brazil, was endless: “I was afraid she would die in my arms,” she confesses.
As an emergency physician, Marcos, 36, tried to be admitted to intensive care last week, but the public hospital on August 28 was completely saturated with the constant hospitalization of new patients in a city where the number covid infections -19 increased exponentially earlier this year.
His mother, Ruth, 56, “had a fever, she felt bad. I presented myself as a doctor, but they left us to wait four hours, sitting on plastic chairs,” he told AFP. .
“I can’t blame my colleagues, because it’s a war zone,” admits this doctor who works in several private clinics, also saturated with pandemics.
With 2 million inhabitants, Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian Amazon, has already experienced horrors in April and May, with mass graves dug in public cemeteries and refrigerated trucks installed outside hospitals to store the bodies of the deceased.
But the situation is worse since the beginning of the year: between January 1 and 11, 1,979 new hospitalizations were registered due to coronavirus, compared to 2,128 in April 2020, in the most complicated month since the arrival of the pandemic.
The funerals of those killed by covid-19 also break records: in the first ten days of 2021, 379 were recorded, more than the 348 in May.
Improvise at home
“I would never have imagined such a situation, not even in my worst nightmares,” says Marcos.
When he realized that his mother could die from lack of bed in intensive care, he took the reins of the situation.
“He was desperate, I was afraid my mother would die in my arms, in a plastic chair. On impulse, I took her by the arm, put her in the car and went home.”
“I called all my friends and former patients that I treated at home for help,” he says.
So he received an oxygen tank and a non-invasive mechanical ventilator, which he installed around a makeshift hospital bed in his own room.
Ruth “had to be intubated”, but in these conditions her son looked for alternatives: “I kept her alive with a nebulizer” and a nasal catheter to facilitate her breathing, she explains.
“It’s been four days without me leaving, so it’s worrying to go back to my guards at the hospital.” He is now cared for by his wife, who is a teacher.
“Fortunately it’s better, but it doesn’t stop me from calling non-stop for news.”
Without wanting to take credit for her salvation, Marcos believes that what really helped his mother was “her will to live and the divine work.”
“It’s a real miracle that she’s still alive.”