The world turned upside down in 80 days

By JULIO ANDRADE LARREA

This is a testimony of so many that there will be, of how I , one of the 7500 million inhabitants of our planet earth,  have had to face and live a pandemic, for which I have been little or not at all prepared and how I lived it, in my own world and environment. If there is something that has made us human beings feel equal for the first time, it has been this virus, which has not distinguished between citizens of the world. Poor or rich, black or white, yellow or brown, Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheist, educated or uneducated, tall or short, fat or thin, young or old, male or female, from the sea or the mountains etc. We have all been affected equally and we have all been led to live days of anguish, desolation, pain, fear and even terror before a situation so unexpected and so little understood. How are we going to live after all this is over? If it ends. How will our lifestyle change from here on? The answers keep leading us into an uncertainty of a post-traumatic situation. This book is a testimony of the daily experiences at home and at hospital where I work as an anaesthesiologist. Sometimes dramatic , sometimes with humor ...... 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071563106

Book preview

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN IN 80 DAYS

JULIO ANDRADE LARREA

QUITO ECUADOR

JUNE 2020

Foreword

This is a testimony of so many that there will be, of how I , one of the 7500 million inhabitants of our planet earth,  have had to face and live a pandemic, for which I have been little or not at all prepared and how I lived it, in my own world and environment. If there is something that has made us human beings feel equal for the first time, it has been this virus, which has not distinguished between citizens of the world. Poor or rich, black or white, yellow or brown, Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheist, educated or uneducated, tall or short, fat or thin, young or old, male or female, from the sea or the mountains etc. We have all been affected equally and we have all been led to live days of anguish, desolation, pain, fear and even terror before a situation so unexpected and so little understood. How are we going to live after all this is over? If it ends. How will our lifestyle change from here on? The answers keep leading us into an uncertainty of a post-traumatic situation.

My name is Julio and I'm the main character in this story. I am 54 years old and I have never experienced anything as threatening or overwhelming as what we are going through in my entire life. Now I can understand something of the experiences of people from other generations who have gone through wars, natural disasters, even pandemics that forced them to learn to be resilient. To overcome adversity. To have faith in the capacity of human beings to rebuild their world and to try to be better and make it a better home for all humanity. I am not sure that we human beings have learned over the centuries to be better, and to have faced disastrous circumstances like the present one to be better. And that makes me very sad. After the countless fratricidal wars, after the countless natural disasters, after so many revolutions and ideological confrontations, have we stopped fighting each other? Have we stopped racial, religious or social hatred? I don't think so. Now that in these 80 days of quarantine, in which we have seen how the world has practically turned upside down and that nothing will be the same from now on, I would like to be optimistic and think that, as I have learned in this confinement, the only thing that counts in this life, the only thing that matters, is the love of your loved ones. The rest doesn't. The loneliness, the cold, the hunger, the despair that everything will return to normal, I have only been able to overcome thanks to the love of my wife, my daughter and my loved ones.

As a doctor, I've had to face this virus head on, and the truth has not been easy. The anguish of the patient who can't breathe. His shortness of breath, his suffering at the knowledge that he may die. The very high risk of catching it just by breathing the same air or by having to intervene in his airway. The distressing conditions of working next to the patient, dressed in countless suits, masks and protectors that suffocate you and do not let you breathe, make it really an experience little more than terrifying. It is comparable to what soldiers must feel on the edge of a battle. I believe that all of us doctors and nurses around the world have been true heroes in this war and hopefully this will help us health care professionals regain the respect and consideration we have lost in recent years for our profession. How great is the medical vocation! We have all been filled with the courage of brave and strong warriors. And what capacity we have had in just 80 days, to read, understand, learn, know and adapt to this new disease. I feel really proud to be a doctor and to have chosen Anaesthesiology as a speciality. Many colleagues have died. The same thing happens on the battlefield and this book is dedicated to them. It is not a scientific book, but rather a testimony. The story of how a virus turned the world upside down in just 80 days that the quarantine in my city has lasted ...

In this book I described what I have experienced day by day. Full of anecdotes, thoughts, dreams, nightmares, songs, joys, sorrows and even recipes ...

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New Years Eve

December 31, 2019 was going to be a special day for me. After two years as head of the hospital's anesthesiology service, that night was to be my last as chief and I would wake up the next day as an every member of the service. They were two very difficult but very rewarding years. Being able to serve and lead such a valuable group of professionals could only make me proud. Two weeks earlier the medical director had told me: It is s time to oxygenate the service. And he was absolutely right. I really don't think I could have gone on another day. The possibility of continuing as a boss I had seen as a challenge for which I was already very worn out and without the strength to continue. I had managed to lead the service always guided by the values that make a good human being. To be fair, prudent, strong and temperamental. And this cannot always please everyone. The hospital authorities demanded a lot from us and we wanted to put limits on these demands. I felt that my conscience was clear, leaving the service in the hands of the person who had been my deputy chief last year, Manuel.

At dawn, I could not have imagined that the first international news on January 1st of this new year 2020 would be the announcement that in a Chinese city, WUHAN, which nobody really knew where it was, there had already been some cases of pneumonia probably attributed to a virus, which they did not suspect could be transmitted between humans but which probably originated in a market of exotic animals and seafood in the city. I don't think anyone could have measured what this communication would mean for the days that followed. Just ten days later, China was reporting its first patient to die of this pneumonia, which was probably caused by an airborne virus of the coronae family. China immediately raised the alarm and the WHO delayed until the end of January to declare a global health emergency.

Images began to appear on television that gradually started to impact the world community. The city of Wuhan was completely closed. Its hospitals collapsed with patients in different states of severity. The dead were counted by the hundreds in a few days. People dying in the streets and their entire hospital system in emergency.

With incredulous eyes and ears we learned that China would build an emerging hospital for seriously ill patients with more than 400 beds in just 10 days. We all commented on the enormous economic power of the Chinese and their high level of technology to do so.

By now the WHO had given the virus a name. It would be called COVID 19 i.e. Coronavirus disease of the year 2019. Of course, it appeared in December 2019. A frightening news spread to the world in those days. A Chinese doctor, an ophthalmologist, a few weeks before, had sounded the alarm to the Chinese authorities about the new disease. The Chinese authorities did not allow him to continue to insist on spreading the alert. His name: Dr. Li. We were all soon frightened to see that he was even imprisoned for telling the truth! It was a highly contagious disease that required immediate action by the Chinese authorities. He achieved nothing and a few days later he died in a ward of his own hospital with multiple organ failure. Dr. Li, a tribute to your courage!!!

At the end of January, news came that moved all of Ecuador. A patient from China had been admitted to Eugenio Espejo Hospital with symptoms of pneumonia. Panic soon spread throughout the city and the medical community. As was to be expected, the authorities took it upon themselves to deny and hide everything about this case and his state of health. The community was asked not to follow false and alarming news. The poor Chinese man died and was cured several times! Every day he waited for the result of the test that was sent to the CDC in Atlanta. And they always told us: The test is not ready. Twenty days had passed before the result finally came back: just Hepatitis B! Nobody believed it and a few days later, the poor Chinese man, this time really died, far from his country. One will never know whether or not he had COVID. Now with all we know we are sure that that test was a false negative and that it was certainly COVID. Well, only God  knows!

February came and the WHO was late in declaring a pandemic. I think he was afraid to do it for political reasons. Cases began to rise in South Korea, Japan and China where it was already over 50,000 and close to 2000 deaths. The panic was already beginning to increase, mainly in the United States. Donald Trump downplayed the risk. It would be less than the seasonal flu to worry about. His advisor Dr. Fauci told him: Start