Dr. Troy Miller, the director of hospital medicine at Van- derbilt Bedford Hospital, researched through evidence from hospitals in cities that were already hit by the pan- demic. He knew it was coming to his hospital soon and wanted to be prepared to care for the people of Bedford County when it was their turn on the front line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe had no effective treatment for the new coronavirus,\u201d he said. \u201cAll you\u2019re seeing are these scary images out of China, then New York and New Jersey, where the ER is stacked up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem was, those hospitals didn\u2019t have an effective treatment at the time either. They were wrestling with a virus they knew nothing about. \u201cI did a lot of reading, a lot of research,\u201d he began. \u201cI had to take a break because I started to freak myself out. We didn\u2019t have a great handle on how to treat patients. Nobody did. And we knew the virus was coming to our town next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Dr. Miller wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer\u2014he was determined to find treatment. He was going to do every- thing in his power to save as many lives as possible. As more information came from the larger cities, Dr. Mill- er\u2019s keen eye for answers led doctors in Bedford County in the right direction. They worked to get early approval to use remdesiver, convalescent plasma, and dexametha- sone as they discovered it was benefiting patients trying to beat COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were pretty aggressive in getting approval,\u201d he said. While the drugs could improve the process of recovery, there was and is no cure. As the doctors followed the learning curve of battling the pandemic, they got a better handle on how to fight it. \u201cWe\u2019re doing better. They\u2019re surviving. They\u2019re not dying on you the way they did initially,\u201d he said. \u201cThat first couple of months was a lot of unknowns. In medicine, that\u2019s hard because when people come to the doctor they want it fixed. There has never been a virus that we\u2019ve cured. We know how to make it better\u2014to fight off the worst of the infection, but nothing really \u2018cures\u2019 a virus,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Miller had to show patients that they could survive. He gave hope to patients who felt like their backs were against a wall. \u201cThey come in and have the deer in the headlights look like, \u2018Am I going to live?\u2019 You instill in them that, yes, you have a serious illness, but we\u2019re here fighting for you. We\u2019re at war and we\u2019ve got to fight. You have to do these things if you want to get better,\u201d he would encourage them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a physician, he didn\u2019t have a choice to give up. That was never an option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPart of my job as a leader is to say \u2018we\u2019re moving forward.\u2019 We hit a wall? Let\u2019s get around the wall or go through the wall. That\u2019s part of what we signed up for.\u201d Dr. Miller made the difference in letting them know that even when their back was against the wall, it was a fragile one. He is a reminder that you can buckle down and break through it.-GN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Troy Miller, the director of hospital medicine at Van- derbilt Bedford Hospital, researched through evidence from hospitals in cities that were already hit by the pan- demic. He knew it was coming to his hospital soon and wanted to be prepared to care for the people of Bedford County when it was their turn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"yoast_head":"\n