Health Adda

At times such as this after 5 months into the pandemic when  Covid  infection numbers are still climbing up, life is anything but “normal”, and uncertainty is looming like thick clouds over our heads, many are getting the feeling that they are reaching the snapping point!   It was in this context that 260  teachers of  one of the reputed school chains , Lucknow Public School,  gathered  Sunday  for an online interactive session by HOPE Initiative to discuss and explore strategies of coping and resilience.   Of the many segments of society that are facing  the present brunt , school teachers  are a particularly hard-hit lot. Apart from the  universal  fear of infection, they find themselves being pushed into crazy degrees of multi-tasking: looking after   children’s studies, cooking, chores  at home  in addition to the teaching. To make matters worse, they are being pushed from their comfort zone of conventio...

  Stress is undoubtedly rising steeply  in these COVID times, not just due to fear of contracting the virus, getting proper treatment, social stigma that it may bring, or surviving the infection, but now to a  newly added cause:  exhaustion and despair from waiting almost endlessly for it to go away! Yes, it is no small concern. Last week during a video consultation, a young 25-year-old girl broke down and described anxiety, palpitations, sleeplessness, constant fear, exhaustion, and a feeling of deep despair stemming from the endless wait for life to get back on track. She complained further of a constant feeling of impending doom and collapse that was driving her to wonder if life was worth living any longer. Coping behavior seems to vary between individuals, but patience is certainly running out for many who had believed that the wait would be a 2-week affair. And now that the wait has crossed 4 months with no end still in sight, many minds are reaching snapping p...

Surviving COVID is not easy; it is not just the threat of death and physical suffering, but many other issues that complicates life. As the COVID outbreak is marching on, many are coming out of the illness and narrating tales of the challenges they had to overcome. I spoke with RK today, a 30 year bachelor engineer who had consulted me on-line a month ago for symptoms of “acidity”…burning in the abdomen and poor appetite that had been going on for a few months. As he did not improve with the medications and worried about an ulcer, he insisted on getting an endoscopy done even in these COVID times. Ours, like most hospitals these days, recommend a precautionary pre-endoscopy COVID test to be done a day prior. The next day, to his surprise and ours, the test came POSITIVE! He was shocked, devastated, and agitated. As he was living alone in a rented apartment in the city, away from parents who stayed 400 km away in another town, he felt very alone and shaken. His cell phone app st...

It is indeed difficult in the midst of a raging pandemic to see any silver lining to the dark COVID clouds, but two sets of observations are emerging on an optimistic note. Let me start with a true story of a 34-year old otherwise healthy young man who came down with fever for 8 days, initially suspected to be typhoid, that refused to subside with several courses of strong antibiotics. By the time he reached a nearby hospital, he was found to be breathless requiring oxygen therapy (requirement 4 liters/minute). A COVID test was sent, but as no beds were available, he was asked to go to another hospital. After much pleading, he was kept in the emergency hold area on supportive care waiting for a bed to fall vacant. Over the next 2 days his fever and breathlessness deteriorated (requiring 15 liters/minute), while his COVID test came positive. He could luckily be shifted to a single ICU bed of a nearby hospital that fell vacant, just in time to be put on a ventilator. In the subsequent da...

The COVID19 story that started just 5 months ago as a regional outbreak and then snowballed into a massive pandemic, seems to have another facet that scientists are coming to terms with: a funny spin or DOOSRA for most aspects we thought we knew!  BLOOD VESSEL DISEASE There is increasing evidence that COVID that was thought to be a viral pneumonia quite like influenza, SARS or H1N1 is turning out to be BLOOD VESSEL disease. Studies on lungs of patients are showing that small vessels that supply blood to the lungs are choked with clots, in stark contrast to what we see in “pneumonia” where the blood vessels are intact but the small airspaces are filled with fluids and cells. This is helping explain why many patients have breathlessness and low levels of oxygen in the blood, and why providing high flow rates of oxygen rather than mechanical ventilation seems to help. Damage and choking of blood vessels in other parts of the body are being increasingly seen a...