The bestselling author of ‘Nobody Will Tell You This But Me’, Bess Kalb has narrated what her father told her about what COVID-19 does to patients.
Bess whose father works in an ICU said the virus destroys the red blood cells of its patients and eats them up from inside.
She wrote: “My dad is an ICU doctor treating COVID-19 patients. In the past WEEK he has set more ‘I’ve never seen a heart rate/RBC count/etc. like this’ records than in his decades-long career. What this virus does to the body is like ‘sticking your finger in an electric socket.’ Stay home.
“He had a patient who needed 8 blood transfusions in a morning even though he wasn’t bleeding. The coronavirus was just eating his red blood cells faster than his bone marrow could make them. It’s fucking mystifying and brutal.
“Young, healthy people are dying from a COVID-19 effect called a “cytokine storm.” Basically, you make it off a ventilator (maybe!), you get your appetite back a little, you think you’re turning a corner, and then your immune system rips through your lung tissue and you drown.
“The other common way young people are falling off the face of the earth from this are the random strokes it causes. Talking one minute, stroking out the next, and then the nurses have to go through the cell phone to find “Dad” because “Mom” usually insists on coming.”