Alabama Hospital Diaries on WBHM & NPR | Dr. Cynthia Crowder-Hicks

Dr. Cynthia Crowder-Hicks, pulmonologist, recently spoke with Mary Scott Hodgin at WBHM, about how this fourth surge of coronavirus is overwhelming Alabama’s hospitals and its health care providers.

Dr. Crowder-Hicks has served the patients of Mobile Infirmary's COVID-19 units since the very beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. She shares, “This wave is a little bit more challenging to hold up, just being honest, because it was preventable. The majority of our population is unvaccinated. And with that being said, those are the ones that tend to decline.

When you look at the patients, they’re scared, and they’re by themselves. So they’re lonely. They have no one to hold their hands or to talk to them. The more anxious they are, the less they’re able to breathe. They all cry. They are all nervous. They are all very vulnerable at that point. The majority still say, ‘I wish I would have.’ And it’s nothing we can do about that now. My hope is that you survive this.

It just, it blows my mind that we have gotten to this point. We’ve had to convert just regular rooms in a hospital to an ICU. Nobody feels that they’re giving optimal care. We are overworked, and we are frustrated.

I’m tired of my 47-year-old’s dying. That was my day today. It’s terrible.”

This story aired on NPR’s morning edition on August 20.
https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/2021/08/20/1029569812/morni...

As well as WBHM, Alabama Public Radio, on August 19.
https://wbhm.org/feature/2021/alabamas-frontline-providers-we-are-overwo...