Michael Orantes had a single request for doctors before they put him on a ventilator:
“Please make sure I wake up,” the Inglewood resident said. “I have a two-year-old daughter.”
Doctors took his command seriously — and, in the end, fulfilled it. But it took quite a while.
Orantes was admitted to Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood on March 25, among the first four or five patients with the coronavirus that the facility saw.
Since that time, doctors at Centinela Hospital have cared for 408 patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Paryus Patel. They have safely sent home 304 patients — including, last week, Orantes. But 74 others have died.
And Orantes, a healthy 32-year-old, is a prime example of the dangers the coronavirus poses even among the young and healthy.
Centinela Hospital, Patel said, has seen larger amounts of young Latino males with the catastrophic disease. His observations reflect the data countywide, which shows people 18 to 40 years old making up a majority of new cases. Data on race and ethnicity presented last week also show that Latinos were more than twice as likely as whites to be infected with the coronavirus and twice as likely to die.
Last week, Barbara Ferrer, LA County’s Public Health director, continually pointed out that more and more young people were being hospitalized with the disease. Half of all deaths occurred among nursing home residents and 93% had health problems. But that still meant 7% of those who died were otherwise healthy. As of Monday, 3,822 had died.
“That represents dozens of people who thought they had no risk from dying,” Ferrer said Wednesday, July 8.
More than 2,000 people in LA County were hospitalized because of the coronavirus as of Monday, a sharp increase from about 1,400 just a few weeks ago.
Orantes’s story also underscores the herculean work doctors and nurses have undertaken to get as many people home as possible. Orantes, recovering at home, declined to be interviewed because he was still too weak.
His journey, after all, was far from easy.
“The amount of care that went into him was astronomical,” Patel said. “Typically when you see those scenarios, the survival is less than 10%. I’m very proud of the team and hospital.”
A week before Orantes was admitted to the hospital, he had returned from a trip to Spain and had begun feeling so ill that he needed medical attention.
He was diagnosed with COVID-19 and his condition quickly declined. His body developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, a sudden and serious lung condition.
Michael Orantes seen with his daughter. Orantes survived 93 days at Centinela Hospital Medical Center where he was treated for the coronavirus and released Thursday, July 9, after 93 days admission. (Photo courtesy CHMC)
Three days after arriving at the emergency department, Orantes was put on a ventilator — a forced breathing apparatus inserted down the airways while the patient is unconscious.
And that’s how he remained for the next 60 days as doctors and nurses battled to keep him alive.
For roughly two months, Orantes was unconscious on a ventilator as doctors fought off one complication after the next — a slowed heart rate, kidney and brain function decline. At times, the pressure on the ventilator was turned up all the way, roughly double what normal life-saving measures require.
Much of what doctors used to treat him over the three-month period evolved day-to-day with the medical consensus at the time. Because the virus is so new, doctors have shared information and results of new studies almost daily.
Hydroxychloroquine, for example, was touted by President Donald Trump and once thought of as a treatment worth prescribing for COVID-19 patients; but it is no longer recommended due to harmful side effects. And steroids, at first controversial, are now being used more, Patel said.
Really all doctors can do, absent a bonafide treatment, is buy time for the body to mount its own immune response.
Likewise, why the virus had life-threatening effects on an otherwise healthy young man like Orantes is one of the key questions that medicine has yet to answer. Doctors say it has entirely to do with the body’s immune system — but it’s not yet clear what people can do to affect it.
“It all depends on how your immune system is able to handle it,” Patel said. “It’s not the virus that causes this panic. The virus is a small portion. The rest is driven by your system.”
Yet, Orantes’s immune system and the hospital’s medical staff eventually prevailed.
Last week, after 93 total days in the hospital’s intensive care unit, Orantes was wheeled out of the lobby doors. Cheers and elation from the medical staff, who invested all they had in his care, accompanied him. Orantes, having lost considerable weight, barely had the strength to raise his hand as the staff screamed his name and clapped.
“My critical care team has not gone home for days and days,” Patel said. “They worked nonstop since March without a day off. Everybody has chipped in. That camaraderie has been really incredible.”
