For the past year, Dr. Lauren Graham has been the COVID-19 coordinator at the Grinnell Regional Medical Center in Grinnell, Iowa. She spoke to Side Effects Public Media鈥檚 Natalie Krebs about what she鈥檚 learned one year into the pandemic.
The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I think in April, I was anticipating this awful wave of terribleness that thankfully did not come, and that's good. But I think I underestimated that this would be an ongoing, always stressful issue, and what was stressful then 鈥� lack of PPE, some certainty about testing protocols 鈥� those things have largely gotten better replaced with new issues, which is just going to be how this process goes.
We've had four nursing home outbreaks in our county. You know, I think every time one of those happens, that is a pretty serious moment. There's these little pictures on the chart that shows the person and you look at those little pictures, and you just know, some of them are not going to make it through this.
And the truth is, you know, we are getting better. And we are having, you have more tools. And we know the illness better. There are less fatalities. And that is we're grateful for that. But for every family member, I have to call and say, 'You know, look, your loved one that you haven't been able to see for months because the nursing home has not allowed any visitors to prevent infection has COVID-19, and they're not doing so well. And here's what we have to do. And they're going to come to the hospital, and you still aren't going to be able to see them, and they may pass away, you might have seen them on a Zoom call.' That feels awful for so many reasons.