It had only been about six months since Katie Ripley finished radiation therapy for Stage 4 breast cancer. But now the 33-year-old was back in the hospital. This time, it wasn’t cancer – she was still in remission – but she’d come down with a nasty respiratory infection.
It wasn’t COVID, but her immune defenses had been weakened by the cancer treatments, and the infection had developed into pneumonia.
By the time Ripley made it to Gritman Medical Center, the local hospital in Moscow, Idaho, on January 6, her condition was deteriorating quickly. The illness had started affecting her liver and kidneys.
Her father, Kai Eiselein, remembers the horror of that night, when he learned she needed specialized ICU care.
“The hospital here didn’t have the facilities for what she needed,” he says. “And no beds were available anywhere.”
Small rural hospitals — also known as critical access hospitals — have struggled with an influx of critically ill COVID-19 patients during the omicron surge.
Staff at small hospitals often have to scour the region for available beds while patients wait. https://t.co/GlPyOjeGQl
— NPR (@NPR) February 11, 2022