Editor’s Note: Augusta University gynecologist Dr. Erin Zodrow Latif has graciously allowed us to share a social media post about recent experiences treating pregnant, non-vaccinated women from our area. She has a heart-wrenching tale to tell. In an email exchange, Dr. Latif wrote about another of her patients admitted with COVID whose family “doesn’t believe in COVID.” That patient ended up in ICU. “It’s all so frustrating,” Dr. Latif wrote, “but we’ll keep taking care of people and doing the best we can.”
This morning I watched my 29-week pregnant patient with five kids at home get intubated as she held my hand and looked at me with pure terror in her eyes. When I walked in the room, the only familiar eyes to her in a sea of masked and gowned strangers. She looked at me and asked, “Am I going to die?”
I couldn’t tell her no.
My mind flashed back to the last time I watched a pregnant patient with COVID get intubated. Her last words before the tube went down were, “I don’t want to die!” She died a few hours later, just after I pulled her 33-week infant from her womb.
So, I told her, “Everything we are doing right now is to keep you and your baby alive, and we are going to keep doing that.” Then I called her husband so she could talk to him as best she could between gasps for air . . . and I pray it won’t be their last conversation.
This is one of three pregnant patients with COVID intubated in our ICUs. We’ve had to turn away two pregnant ICU transfers from smaller hospitals because our system is completely overwhelmed with patients needing ICU-level care. We almost never turn away OB transfer requests, and it is heartbreaking to be so unable to help our rural colleagues and their sick patients.
And meanwhile, this disease is sweeping through my children’s schools, and I’m terrified for their safety. Colleagues are getting sick with breakthrough cases, and while they aren’t severely ill, they are still out of the work force.
This is so surreal. I feel like we’re fighting a war and we’re out-gunned, out-manned, out-numbered, and out-planned.
The numbers here are staggering and speak for themselves.
But lifesaving vaccines are readily available and easy to get for free. If you are scared of the vaccine, I can promise that what you could experience inside a COVID ICU is much scarier.
Dr. Erin Latif is an associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She completed both medical school and residency at the Medical College of Georgia, and has been in practice at Augusta University since completing her residency in 2006. Her clinical interests include Contraception, Hormone Therapy, Adolescent Gynecology, and Minimally Invasive GYN surgery. During her downtime, Dr. Latif enjoys hiking, boating, relearning piano, and spending time with her husband Rhadi, two children Nicholas and Sofia, and their dog Scout.
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