Greek Nurse Sets Up ICU at Home to Care for Covid-Infected Family

Greek nurse Gabriel Tachtatzoglou has set up an ICU at home near Thessaloniki to care for members of his family who are infected with the coronavirus.
The 49-year-old Tachtatzoglou, who is the deputy head of nursing staff at the at Papanikolaou Hospital, said that he faced a major dilemma when his wife, both her parents and her brother came down with Covid-19 in November.
The whole family was living in a two-story home in the village of Agios Athanasios.

ICU dilemma

“They either would have had to be hospitalized or I would have tried to take care for them at home,” he told Mega TV.
As hospital intensive care units were filling up in Thessaloniki, he took the second option by setting up a makeshift ICU in the downstairs apartment of his family’s home.
“I’ve been working in the intensive care ward for 20 years, and I didn’t want to put my in-laws through the psychological strain of separation. Plus, there was already a lot of pressure on the health service,” Tachtatzoglou told the Associated Press (AP).
He rented, borrowed and modified the monitors, oxygen delivery machines and other equipment his loved ones might need.
He also improvised. Out of a hat stand, he fashioned an IV bag holder. At one point, the repurposed pole supported four bags dispensing antibiotics, fluids to address dehydration and fever-reducing medicine, the AP reports.

Traumatic weeks

All family members — including Tachtatzoglou, who also came down with the virus — eventually recovered, thanks to his efforts and experience.
“It was a traumatic few weeks,” he told Mega TV. “It feels like our whole family was run over by a train. Now we are picking up our pieces.”
The decision to set up an ICU at home, his family says, probably saved their lives.
“If we had gone to the hospital, I don’t know where we would have ended up,” Polychroni Stergiou, the nurse’s 64-year-old mother-in-law, told AP. “That didn’t happen, thanks to my son-in-law.”

Don’t try this at home

Tachtatzoglou, however, warns people not to try to do something similar. “It is very difficult to create an environment similar to an ICU at home,” he told Radio North.
“I have great admiration for our health service. I did what I did, because four members of my family were infected at the same time.
“Of course I took a risk with their health. But, I knew all along that if their clinical condition changed to the worse I would refer them to hospital,” the Greek nurse said.