ReportageIn the geriatric ward, twelve beds are reserved for patients affected by Covid-19, which overwhelms very elderly patients with intense fatigue, sometimes completely confused.
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The second wave day by day | Episode 5. It is past 11 am, a soft winter light illuminates Colette’s room, whose window opens onto the Sacré Coeur. Lying under a pale yellow sheet, the old lady has her eyes closed, and her lips only let out a whisper. Leaning close to his ear, Julie Pacharro, physiotherapist in the geriatric department of Bichat hospital, kindly encourages him: “Come on, let’s go to the chair, we’re not going to stay in bed all day. You agree ? “, she asks him. But Colette is tired: «Dodo, dodo»she repeats, turning on her side.
Tested positive for Covid-19, Colette has been hospitalized for more than a week already. At his bedside, caregivers in blouses and blue charlotte, their faces barred by a mask and glasses, discuss his return to the accommodation facility for dependent elderly people (Ephad). With the fatigue associated with the disease and the loss of benchmark due to hospitalization, the progress that the team welcomed last week, has stalled. Like her, many elderly patients struggle to recover, even without respiratory symptoms. “They are completely flat in their beds, it’s striking”, notes Agathe Raynaud-Simon, head of the service.
Located on the fourteenth floor of the tower, the department has twenty beds, twelve of which are reserved for Covid patients, whether the infection is the root cause of their hospitalization or not. “It is better to keep them, see what happens”, indicates the geriatrician, the eye riveted on the forecasts of the epidemiologists. “There we reached a plateau, but the epidemic is not going to stop”, she believes. A simple tarp taped to the wall separates the two corridors, to dissuade non-Covid patients from walking on the other side. A single patient, “A filoute”, sought to cross the border. “It is a somewhat risky situation, but without reinforcement, it is not possible to do otherwise”, she emphasizes.
“My life has changed dramatically”
During the first wave, the “submerged” service only welcomed Covid patients, many of them in serious condition, too fragile to be hospitalized in intensive care. The death rate has skyrocketed to 30% compared to less than 10% normally. “When it started, we felt like it was Ebola. We were all dressed as cosmonauts ”, remembers Nathalie Faucher, geriatrician. While joking about the charlotte who gives him “Look like a Smurf”, she admits sometimes removing her mask and gloves, facing visually impaired or hearing-impaired patients who are sometimes completely distraught by the situation.
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