AGIOS ATHANASIOS, Greece (AP) – What does a medical professional do when his wife and in-laws contract the disease at the center of a months-long pandemic?
Gabriel Tachtatzoglou, an intensive care nurse, did not feel well about treatment options in Greece’s second-largest city when his wife, both her parents and her brother were given COVID-19 in November. Thessaloniki was one of the areas in Greece with the most confirmed coronavirus cases, and hospitals’ intensive care units were filling up.
Tachtatzoglou, who had to be quarantined and unable to go to work when his family members tested positive for the virus, decided to use his ICU experience by taking care of them himself.
That decision, his family says, likely saved their lives.
“If we had gone to the hospital, I don’t know where we would have ended up,” said Polychoni Stergiou, the nurse’s 64-year-old mother-in-law. “That didn’t happen, thanks to my son-in-law.”
Tachtatzoglou set up a makeshift ICU in the downstairs apartment of his family’s two-story house in the village of Agios Athanasios, about 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) from the city. He rented, borrowed, and changed the monitors, oxygen delivery machines, and other equipment that his loved ones might need.
He also improvised. He made an IV bag holder from a hat stand. At one point, the repurposed pole supported four bags of antibiotics, anti-dehydration fluids, and fever-reducing drugs.
“I’ve been working in the intensive care unit for twenty years and I didn’t want to force my in-laws through the psychological strain of divorce. In addition, there was already a lot of pressure on the health service, ”Tachtatzoglou told the AP in an interview.
In most countries, doctors and nurses are discouraged from treating close relatives and friends with the theory that emotional ties can cloud their judgment and affect their skills. Tachtatzoglou says he has been in daily contact with doctors at Papageorgiou Hospital, the overwhelmed facility where he works, while caring for his sick relatives, and would have hospitalized each of the four if they needed to be intubated.
“I took care of them to the point where it wouldn’t be dangerous,” he said. “I was always ready to take them to the hospital if necessary.”
Greece, which has a population of 10.7 million, spent the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic with one of the lowest infection rates in Europe. When the cold weather kicked in, the number of confirmed cases and virus-related deaths doubled. The country’s cumulative death toll during the pandemic dropped from 393 on October 1 and 635 a month later to 2,517 on December 1. As of Tuesday, it stood at 4,730.
While the ICU units in Thessaloniki were in full use, COVID-19 patients deemed too sick to wait for a bed were taken to hospitals in other parts of Greece, riding in torpedo-shaped treatment capsules. Meanwhile, the situation for Tachtatzoglou’s family worsened when his wife and in-laws fell ill during an alarming follow-up.
Tachtatzoglou said he was constantly in doubt about transferring his family members to hospitals in Thessaloniki, knowing that this would mean they wouldn’t be able to see each other and might be moved to a more distant hospital.
“We were reduced to tears. There were times when I was desperate, and I was really afraid that I was going to lose them, ”said the nurse.
They all got through, although Tachtatzoglou eventually became infected with the virus himself.
“I took precautions when I treated them, but I didn’t have the personal protective equipment you find in hospitals,” he said. “That’s probably how I got sick.”
___ A good thing at AP: https://apnews.com/hub/one-good-thing ___ Follow Kantouris at: https://twitter.com/CostasKantouris