Aspirus doctor offers insights into COVID-19

“We may all want to get together at Thanksgiving and see our loved ones,” Dr. Stephen Phillipson said, expressing the desire of many people.

The Aspirus Wausau Hospital Director of Medicine then posed the question, “But how are you going to feel if you were the asymptomatic person who gave it to gramma and gramma is dead or she’s in an ICU or she’s sick for weeks and weeks and weeks on a ventilator? And that’s the reality of this illness.”

Phillipson oversees the hospital’s COVID-19 patient treatment. He provided some insights on what’s like for COVID-19 patients and the experience and toll on staff at a status report from the Aspirus hospital and clinic system on Nov. 18.

When asked what he would say to prevent people from going to bars or other social gatherings, Phillipson warned, “They may end up killing someone that they love or injuring them not knowing they have COVID.”

“One of the difficult things about COVID-19 is that so many people show no symptoms and that’s why it’s so easy to spread,” he said. “That’s why we need to get back to being cautious when you’re out.”

He turned to a frequently-used label for healthcare providers.

“I’ve heard of us being talked about as the front line workers but right now, the people in our community, they need to be the front line workers” by following CDC guidelines, he said. “Right now, we’re your last line of defense and you do not want to end up on my service right now with COVID,” he said.

“There’s a myth that really just only infirm and elderly people end up in our hospital. That’s not true. We see people who are in their 40s and 50s (and are) extremely ill. We’ve had people in their 20s die. We’ve had people who were in their mid 30s go from talking to us to passing away within 24-36 hours. This is a serious illness and it affects a broad swath of people,” the doctor said.

Phillipson conceded people most likely to contract the virus are older and have other health issues but there’s also the falsehood that these people would have died anyway.

“We’re seeing many people who should have had many more years of life with their families to spend but who will not because of the COVID pandemic,” he said.

From a patient perspective, Phillipson noted many people can go home in a few days if hospitalized for other illnesses, “but COVID, not so much.”

“If you’re sick enough to be in the hospital, you’ll be very isolated. You may be here for weeks and weeks and weeks,” the doctor said. You have maybe one out of three chances of surviving to going home if you end up on a ventilator, Phillipson warned.

There are also the challenges of reaching difficult decisions, especially for patients near death, that don’t always go well via phone and that’s hard on staff as well as families, Phillipson said.

Phillipson’s team has grown substantially because in addition to COVID-19 patients, “We’re also taking care of the same number of people we had to take care of before with just the normal illnesses that affect our community, he said.

His staff are scheduled for 12-hour shifts. The number of additional patients has been manageable so far and they have plans in place for even higher numbers, he said. “So we have ways that I think we’ll be able to keep people safe in terms of what we’re able to do extending ourselves creatively,” the doctor added.

Phillipson said his team has had great leadership support, has a well thought-out plan “and we’ll get through this.”

“My team is seeing volumes of people dying that they’ve never had to deal with before. And that’s been emotionally draining on them, it’s emotionally draining on the nursing staff and the front line caregivers. And they work hard. They have to wear all this protective equipment. It makes for a long and draining day when you’re working in a COVID unit,” he said.

Phillipson included a more positive note even as he recalled he started his career with dealing with the HIV-AIDS virus “and all my patients died.” This has provided him with some perspective in dealing with this pandemic.

He tells his younger physicians, nurses and staff, “This may be one of the defining moments of their careers and how they hold up through this is something they’re going to think about and recall for a long time.”

“It’s very hard for my young physicians to lose five or six patients in 24 or 36 hours. They’re not used to that,” he said. “So basically it’s talking it through and then getting up and doing it again the next day. We have a lot of people who do well and go home. You have to focus on that aspect,” Phillipson said