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“I was irresponsible, I was around without a mask” | Society

On August 26 Vanessa Martínez will turn 29 in a bed at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid. Her hands are stiff, the tracheostomy scars still look tender,. he no longer sees well, he has to learn to walk again and a week ago they managed to remove the tube They put him on his bladder on April 21, when he entered the ICU. He spent 69 days there. He has been on the floor since June 29 and knows that there are months left until he can stop seeing those four walls. “They saved me, and now they drown me. It is day after day after day after day … “he says. “I was irresponsible,” she also says.

Martínez never thought he would catch it. Not even when they called her from the nursing home Orpea in Algete, a town northeast of Madrid, which he entered as a cleaning staff and where he became a Nursing assistant: “They told me that it was necessary, that although I had no experience it was easy. I said yes despite the risk because I needed to work, for my daughter. ” Allison, with Down syndrome, is eight years old and lives with her family in Honduras, where Martínez left in 2015 to come to Spain to work. “Treatment for medical complications is very expensive, and I had no other choice.”

The need and disbelief regarding the virus were two key factors: “She was not careful, she was without a mask. I was young, why would I get infected? And here I am”. There he is after a journey that began on April 5 and that he remembers in a blurred way: “That day I arrived in a taxi at Gómez Ulla, I had a fever and infinite exhaustion. From there they took me by ambulance to the field hospital of Ifema. And I don’t remember any more ”. Leyre Pérez, the Infectious doctor who treats her, helps with the dates: “She entered the Marañón on April 17, they brought her from Ifema because she had complications. She entered the ICU four days later and we took her to the plant on June 29. ”

It is the longest and most serious stays they have had in that hospital, through which 6,511 cases of covid have passed, 2,861 of them admitted in acute and 248 in their critical beds. All these serious ones then require a long rehabilitation. Pérez explains that “keeping a patient asleep for so long requires strong sedation to relax the entire musculature with the consequent loss of muscle mass and many residual sequelae” The lungs, especially. The digestive system, the cardiovascular system, the nutritional deficits that can affect other organs such as the eye. Reduced mobility.

When Martinez went up to the floor, she was unable to even hold her own head, which she now supports on a pair of pillows that lift her up. She misses a shower a lot: “They’ve been washing me with sponges for three months, until recently I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone. They’ve been putting diapers on me … diapers. ” Despite this, the young woman smiles: Anabel García, one of the nurses who attend to her every day, appears at the door. “My job is to take care of her, whatever it is.” This specialist assures that “it is not easy”: “They go through very complicated phases, of anguish because it is a very slow process, but also rewarding when you see them progress. She is moving forward”.

Her progress now largely depends on a room on the ground floor of the hospital, the rehabilitation room, where she is led by a wheelchair attendant. It is another link in the post-ICU recovery program for covid patients that the center has started up and in which eight specialties converge, including Psychiatry, Internal Medicine and Pneumology. They have, like Martínez, another 30 patients in follow-up.

Olga Arroyo, the head of the Rehabilitation service that includes Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy, explains that “Vanessa has neurological and neuropathic complications, in addition to involvement in the central nervous system, lack of balance, reflexes … All of this must be re-educated, taking into account the respiratory problem, in addition ”. Recovery times for these patients are lengthening. “The rehabilitation will easily last about eight months and some will have sequelae and will not recover 100%,” says Arroyo.

His rehabilitation doctor, Rubén Juárez, clarifies that the important thing is “The most vital thing”. Sit, get up, brush your teeth, shower, eat … “They have to learn to do it again“He says while looking at Martinez, who tries to move his feet, rigid, propped up from the armpits on a walker. An assistant and her physical therapist, Cristina Muñoz, hold her down. The specialist explains that progress is being slow, “but being”: “If she had strength in both arms she could already comb her hair on her own, but at the moment you only reach the neck with one arm. It has strengthened the buttock and is able to stay upright, although it still does not have strength in the pelvis and legs. “

The maximum time it takes in effort is 30 seconds. “Little by little, although I already feel like running away. But no, I will have to go back to the room, ”says Martínez, who is once again seated in the wheelchair. They put her feet, hands, and a tattoo appears on her left forearm: “Life goes on.” Martínez nods: “And I thank you for it.”

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