Immortalised in Wool

Friday 12th June 2020

Figures for 11th June

UK COVID Deaths 151 / Total 41,279

James Cook Hospital – Total COVID deaths – 248

All COVID cases within South Tees Hospitals Trust – 19

James Cook Critical Care COVID cases – 2 / 2 ventilated

James Cook Critical Care non-COVID cases – 38 / 23 ventilated

I was on-call last night. Fortunately things remain relatively calm. We have been a little tight for beds the last few days but we haven’t seen many new admissions over the past 24 hours and we didn’t admit any patients overnight. More importantly, a significant number of our non-COVID patients have recovered and are well enough to leave for the ward which has left us with a few empty beds for once.

Certainly the numbers of COVID patients, both within Critical Care and the hospital as a whole are continuing to fall which is good news. As the number of COVID patients decrease, more resources can be directed toward the ‘non-COVID’ areas of the hospital so the restoration of ‘normal’ services can continue. The hospital is still a very different place to how it looked before this all started. Social-distancing, facemasks, PPE use and frequent testing of patients are some of the steps being taken to ensure that non-COVID patients are not infected with the coronavirus during their hospital stay.

I’d like to thank Sister Pugh’s sister, Maria, who has knitted two dolls that have immortalised Janet and myself in wool, following on from my ‘World’s Smallest Nurse’ post at the beginning of May:

We’ve been knitted in red and white PPE suits complete with visor. They're obviously not to scale though, as the Janet one is way too big!

Joking aside, they’re superb and I’m very flattered although my son did ask what Father Christmas was doing wearing a visor and how come one of his elves was dressed in a snow-suit? I ignored him and told him he could only criticise once someone had deemed him worthy enough for his own wool figurine. My eldest daughter was worried they might be Voodoo dolls and told me I had better start being nice to Janet! She’s got me worried now…