Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Trinidad-born Dr Michael Pil­lai, 28, is one of the ‘he­roes’ work­ing on the front­line in a hos­pi­tal in East Brook­lyn, New York.

Pil­lai, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Diego Mar­tin, is an in­ter­nal med­i­cine res­i­dent and is in his sec­ond year of res­i­den­cy.

Work­ing through this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hap­pened to fall dur­ing his train­ing so he did not have a choice but to work.

“I was need­ed at the hos­pi­tal. In a mat­ter of months the way we once knew life had changed. The cas­es in­creased rapid­ly and so did the com­pli­ca­tions,” Pil­lai said.

“I’ve worked in the ICU as well as on the ad­mit­ting team dur­ing this pe­ri­od. While in the ICU the en­tire unit was COVID pos­i­tive of vary­ing ages. Dur­ing ad­mit­tance, more than 90 per cent of ad­mis­sions to the hos­pi­tal were due to res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems from COVID-19. It was nec­es­sary to cre­ate new ar­eas of the hos­pi­tal to ac­com­mo­date the amount of COVID-19 pa­tients and res­i­dents from all spe­cial­ties were help­ing with the work that was nec­es­sary,” he added.

Pil­lai, in shar­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence with Guardian Me­dia, said the work load in­creased “ex­po­nen­tial­ly and more was ex­pect­ed of us as physi­cians.”

He said it has tak­en an emo­tion­al toll both on fam­i­lies and on health care work­ers in­clud­ing nurs­es and physi­cians.

“The death rate in­creased sub­stan­tial­ly as did the amount of codes be­ing called for rapid­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing pa­tients. I have per­son­al­ly seen peo­ple that I work with who have suf­fered from this virus that lead them need­ing crit­i­cal man­age­ment. These in­clude; doc­tors, nurs­es, clerks, res­pi­ra­to­ry ther­a­pists,” Pil­lai said.

“Though I would say the num­ber of ad­mis­sions for COVID-19 has been de­creas­ing com­par­ing last week to the pri­or week. This virus is af­fect­ing peo­ple of all ages es­pe­cial­ly with rapid de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the obese pop­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tat­ing ven­ti­la­tor sup­port,” he added.

Pil­lai said COVID-19 caus­es a de­creased oxy­gen lev­el amongst some pa­tient called hy­pox­ia, “This lack of oxy­gen caus­es res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress ne­ces­si­tat­ing oxy­gen de­liv­ery to these pa­tients by ex­ter­nal mea­sures. When these pa­tients do not re­spond to ex­ter­nal mea­sures of oxy­gen de­liv­ery then the de­ci­sion is made for in­tu­ba­tion and con­nec­tion to a ven­ti­la­tor.”

“Some of these pa­tient’s with COVID-19 de­vel­op Acute Res­pi­ra­to­ry Dis­tress Syn­drome (ARDS) and at this point the chances of suc­cess­ful ex­tu­ba­tion from the ven­ti­la­tor de­creas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly. It is al­so im­por­tant to note that these are with the crit­i­cal pa­tients,” he added.

Pil­lai not­ed that peo­ple are al­so re­cov­er­ing with sup­port­ive care such as treat­ing the fevers, ad­e­quate hy­dra­tion and self-iso­la­tion, “Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic vis­i­tors have not been al­lowed due to the risk of spread of the virus. That be­ing said, pa­tients’ fam­i­lies have to be called dai­ly with up­dates on pa­tient care as they can­not see their fam­i­ly mem­bers so there are un­for­tu­nate cas­es where peo­ple are dy­ing alone un­der these cir­cum­stances.”

This process, he fur­ther ex­plained, has been dif­fi­cult in many as­pects “but it is im­por­tant that we work with what we have and work to­geth­er to op­er­ate as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble.”

In giv­ing ad­vice to T&T, Pil­lai urged all to, “stay at home and re­frain from gath­er­ings.”

“Re­mem­ber to leave your shoes out­side your door and wipe your phones and your glass­es. We are fac­ing this pan­dem­ic to­geth­er and it is im­por­tant that we look out for each oth­er and main­tain so­cial dis­tance,” he said.

“I of­ten won­der if I would have cho­sen to go in­to med­i­cine had I an­tic­i­pat­ed some­thing like this. In the grand scheme of things we all have our part to play, this just hap­pens to be mine, and I humbly em­brace it,” he added.