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Just before the patient dies, the nurse holds her hand again.
The older woman has Covid and is in a coma, only machines keep her alive.
The attending doctor had spoken to the daughter beforehand.
Together they decided that it was better to "withdraw from therapy".
It was the mother's will, the daughter says, crying.
She leaves the room sobbing.
The carer then lets go of the patient's hand and switches off the devices next to the bed. Monitors go black and there is only one thing left in the room that would otherwise be penetrated by the tireless alarm beeping: silence. The orderly opens the window. “So that it can go, the soul. You do it like that, ”he says into the camera.
There are many people who do not survive the rbb documentation "Charité intensive - Station 43".
From Christmas 2020 to March 2021, i.e. in the middle of the second wave, a camera team monitored everyday life in the intensive care unit in the Virchow Clinic, where the Covid patients come who are critical.
Four parts emerged from it: "Dying", "Fighting", "Hope", "Believing".
They are already celebrated in social networks, sometimes praised as an “educational recommendation” or even desired as a “duty for lateral thinkers”.
People on Twitter report shocked how they cried after 15 minutes - or had to stop completely because they couldn't stand it.
Carer Nele Schönefelder looks after people who may not survive Covid
Source: rbb / DOCDAYS / Carl Gierstorfer
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You don't need to be a supporter of the “No Covid” idea to get anxious when you see what the virus is doing to people and their bodies. Not only with the infected, but also with those who take care of them. Those who said about Chancellor Angela Merkel that they were currently in the middle of the third wave, sending one emergency call after the other. “We cannot leave doctors and nurses alone. Alone they cannot win the fight against the virus in this third wave, even with the best medical art and the most self-sacrificing effort. "
Watching the doctors, nurses and therapists fight death in "Ward 43" is not for the faint of heart. Even if you know in the back of your mind that only a small percentage of those infected with Covid will be there and - if things go bad - they will later be included in the daily statistics as an anonymous number as those who died "to or with Corona". The documentation gives them a concrete face, a story.
There are cases like the young patient, 28 years old, previously completely healthy, “standing in life”, as one of the doctors treating her says. Her prone condition initially improved, but then her heart failed. Doctors connect one device after the other after the resuscitation. Caregivers handle hoses, syringes, and plastic coats rustle. “You always have to try to remain objective and to achieve the best for the patient and to avoid senseless treatments,” senior physician Jan Kruse will later explain. But sometimes things happened "in the vague hope of being able to turn the tide again that had to do with human dignity". Finally, the intensive care doctor must also see that Covid has won. The mother of the young woman wants to hold her hand again.Shortly thereafter, undertakers pick up her body.
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The 28-year-old is not the only victim.
Because during the shooting, the phone rings all the time to ask whether there is still a free bed on "Station 43".
There is, for example, the 83-year-old who is asked when he is admitted whether he has an advance directive and would like to be ventilated.
There is the man for whom the doctors use a pacemaker as a last act of desperation because he is actually still too young to die.
There is the woman who asks God for mercy when she massages her husband's legs with no sign of life and so far always assumed that he would come home again.
There is an older man who asks himself why he was allowed to survive and his roommate was not - and who cannot forget how he witnessed his death.
If the patient is fully conscious, a blood clot is sucked out of the lungs
Source: rbb / DOCDAYS / Carl Gierstorfer
But there is also the young IT specialist who can no longer breathe because a clot of blood is in his lungs and who bursts into tears because he has to decide which therapy he would like to undergo.
Does he want to get blood thinners, but perhaps risk a cerebral haemorrhage and disability?
With full consciousness, the doctors finally insert a very thin tube into his body and pump out the clot.
He will later call himself a "survivor".
There is the man who, after 35 days, was hanging on the artificial lung and tried to breathe his name again for the first time.
Who has to learn again to breathe alone.
The nurses put it on very gently, and that already exhausts him.
The patient who hung on the device called ECMO for 35 days has to learn to breathe again
Source: rbb / DOCDAYS / Carl Gierstorfer
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Corona had actually hit colleagues like a wave, says Laurence Erdur, psychologist on the ward.
Death and dying are suddenly omnipresent, without there being any space to deal with them, "because then the next one will come".
In addition, the separation between job and private life no longer works, because the pandemic continues outside.
Or as nurse Nele Schönfelder puts it: “I don't know how many corpses I've seen recently.
Sometimes I just cry. ”That also relieves the stress.
It is hard to imagine what an emotional effort it is to remain empathetic with each patient and not dull them.
It was a wise decision to let doctors, nurses, therapists, relatives and patients talk without comment. So everyone can form their own opinion. Even if you sometimes ask yourself whether it really needs such drastic images on the verge of voyeurism. For example, when the camera hits it hard while the ECMO's finger-thick tubes, a kind of artificial lung, are inserted into veins and the blood splatters. It takes a few shock seconds to digest something like this. But maybe it has to be so drastic in the face of this muddle in the debates about lockdown or not, school openings or not, AstraZeneca or not, permission for “out of the box” demos or not.
In the second part of the documentation at the latest, one understands that the ECMO is the last weapon against Covid in intensive care units, which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. A device that supplies the blood with oxygen because your own lungs can no longer do that. It doesn't heal the lungs, but gives them time to regenerate, explains one of the treating doctors. He estimates that 50 to 55 devices were in operation at the same time in Berlin when the photos were taken.
“It's not just the devices that are a problem, but also the staff who are trained to ensure safe therapy.
That is the bigger eye of the needle, ”explains the doctor further.
Not everyone can operate the device, let alone connect a person to it.
And so the specialists drive to the patients throughout the city to bring them to the Virchow.
Actually, one of the specialists is always sitting in an ambulance.
Again a patient is brought to the Virchow because the treating doctors no longer know what to do
Source: rbb / DOCDAYS / Carl Gierstorfer
Yes, and that is the decisive factor, the ECMO does not guarantee survival either. 80 to 90 percent die anyway, says one of the intensive care physicians and his colleague Felix Bangert adds: “You pick up patients because you have more options here to treat them and provide them with the ECMO. And then they die so quickly and you ask yourself what else can you trust. You cannot trust your medical skills because they prove every day that it is not true. You can't trust your stomach either, because the young 28-year-old dies, the 33-year-old dies. "
But then call an external hospital again and say: Hey, we have a patient here, can you please take him over, we won't get any further. “And you already know that the likelihood that you will get ahead with all the knowledge you have is also super low. It's really frustrating. ”And yet of course he drives out again.
All these experiences, this dying, this fighting will leave traces. In the end, senior physician Jan Kruse is sure of that. Not only will he keep negative memories, but many. "I hope that the achievements that my colleagues bring here and the personal commitment and sacrifices they have made will be recognized and lead to structural changes." That Corona leads to the situation of nursing, the doctors improve. “However, I have my doubts that people will remember it. But I hope that this will be left over in the end. "
The four parts of the documentation "Charité Intensiv - Station 43" are available in the ARD media library. The programs will also be broadcast on rbb April 21st, 21:00 - episode 2: "Fighting", April 28th, 21:00 pm - episode 3: "Hope", April 28th, 21:30
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- episode 4: "Faith".