BHOPAL: When Narendra Singh from Khategaon in the Dewas district was wheeled into the Covid ward of the People's General Hospital, Bhanpur, in the third week of April this year, he was in a critical state. He was running a high temperature and was unable to breathe. His Oxygen Saturation Level was 72 percent, an alarming figure.
He was immediately put on oxygen support but that did not bring about any perceptible improvement in his condition. He was still gasping for breath.
It was then that Dr Priyanka Sachdeva Rohira, the in-charge of the ward, got cracking. Instead of rushing the patient, who was in his mid-forties, to the ICU and putting him on ventilator support, she decided to adopt a different strategy.
She asked the nursing staff to start nebulising the patient. Next, she asked the patient to lie on his stomach and start taking long breaths. That provided some relief to him.
After a while, she asked to lie straight and with the help of the X-ray of his lungs, started thumping him softly on his chest at the points were mucous could be seen. The idea, she later explained, was to shift the mucous stuck in his lungs, towards the breathing pipe, so that he can ultimately be spit it out.
The technique did wonders. Within one-and-a-half hours of the therapy, it jumped from 70 per cent to 92 per cent. The patient was out of danger now. With tears in his eyes, Narendra thanked the doctor with folded hands. He could now breathe properly ñ a great relief for him.
Talking to Free Press, Dr Priyanka said that breathing distress is basically the result of the failure of the lungs to take in air in the required quantity. Nebulisation helps patients as it clears the airways. Soft thumps on the chest aid in clearing the lungs of the mucous, which prevent the lungs from working at their full capacity.
The patient was shifted to a different ward and within a couple of days, walked out of the hospital hale and hearty.
A committed corona warrior, Dr Priyanka is doing her post graduation in gynaecology. Her husband is also a medic, posted in a government health facility in Datia. They have a two-year-old adorable daughter, Aradhya.
†All through the second wave of the pandemic, she served the corona patients day and night at the hospital, leaving Aradhya in the care of her husband, Dr Nitin Rohira and his parents.
