AGIOS ATHANASIOS, Greece (AP) – What does a medical professional do if his wife and parents-in-law contract the disease in the midst of a months-long pandemic?
Gabriel Tachtatzoglou, a critical care nurse, did not feel well about the available treatment options in Greece’s second largest city when his wife, both her parents and her brother came down with COVID-19 in November. Thessaloniki was one of the areas in Greece with the most confirmed cases of coronavirus, and hospital-intensive care units were filling up.
Tachtatzoglou, who had to go into quarantine and could not go to work once his family members tested positive for the virus, decided to use his ICU experience by looking after them himself.
That decision, his family says, probably saved their lives.
“If we had gone to the hospital, I do not know where we would have ended up,” said Polychoni Stergiou, the nurse’s 64-year-old mother-in-law. “It did not happen, thanks to my son-in-law.”
Tachtatzoglou erected an improvised ICU in the apartment on the ground floor of his family’s two-story house in the town of Agios Athanasios, about 30 kilometers from the city. He rents, borrows and modifies the monitors, oxygen delivery machines and other equipment his loved ones need.
He also improvised. From a hat stand he formed an IV pocket holder. At one point, the reused pole supported four bags that reduced antibiotics, dehydration fluids and fever-reducing medications.
‘I have been working in the intensive care unit for 20 years and do not want to put my in-laws through the psychological tension of divorce. In addition, there has been a lot of pressure on the health service, “Tachtatzoglou said in an interview with the AP.
In most countries, doctors and nurses are discouraged from treating relatives and friends about the theory that emotional ties can cloud their judgment and affect their skills. Tachtatzoglou says he kept in daily contact with doctors at Papageorgiou Hospital, the overwhelming facility where he works, while caring for his sick family members, and that he would have hospitalized one of the four if they had been intubated.
“I looked after them to the point where it would not pose a danger,” he said. “I was ready at all times to take them to the hospital if necessary.”
Greece, with a population of 10.7 million, has experienced the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic with some of the lowest infection rates in Europe. When cold weather started, the number of confirmed cases and virus-related deaths doubled. The country’s cumulative death toll in the pandemic rose 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 ICU wards in Thessaloniki were driven to their capacity, COVID-19 patients who were too ill to wait on a bed were taken to hospitals in other parts of Greece and driven in torpedo-shaped treatment capsules. Meanwhile, the situation for Tachtatzoglou’s family deteriorated when his wife and parents-in-law fell ill in a disturbing succession.
Tachtatzoglou said he was constantly tormented by his family members going to hospitals in Thessaloniki because he knew they would not be able to see each other, and that they might move to a hospital further.
“We were moved to tears. “There were times when I was desperate, and I was really scared I would lose them,” said the nurse.
They all penetrated, although Tachtatzoglou eventually became infected with the virus himself.
“I took precautions when I treated it, but I do not have the personal protective equipment you get in hospitals,” he said. “That’s probably how I got sick.”
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