LEE COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) —”I was in the barn feeding horses, and we were moving some things around,” remembered Arlene Kalmbach.
That’s when she felt a bite on her leg and figured it was another scorpion. But a few minutes later, she felt the pain travel up her leg.
“My husband and I knew this was when I knew this was not a normal reaction,” she said, realizing it was likely a black widow spider bite.
The Lee County residents went to their nearest emergency room, in Caldwell, where Kalmbach stayed for 16 hours. She says the doctor then told them they had exhausted all their resources and needed to send her somewhere else.
“The ER doctor was attempting to find a hospital to transfer me to, which would’ve logically been somewhere in College Station or Bryan, since we’re only 30 minutes away,” Kalmbach said.
But they were informed the doctor couldn’t find a place to send her.
“He checked in the Brazos Valley, and there wasn’t anything available… He told my husband he checked St. David’s and Seton in Austin,” she said.
KXAN has reached out to both health systems for comment but has not yet heard back.
Friends in Kerrville found out Peterson Regional Medical Center may have availability — three hours away.
“I just couldn’t believe I was all the way in Kerrville when there’s so many — like there’s a major city between me and Kerrville,” Kalmbach said.
Kaeli Dressler, Chief Nursing Officer at Peterson Regional, says they’ve been fielding calls every day from other hospitals asking to transfer their patients.
“All hospitals, their typical transfer patterns or pathways… are interrupted and disrupted, because being over capacity,” Dressler told KXAN News over the phone. “And so they just begin circling in wider and wider circles trying to find a hospital that has capacity.”
Dressler says her nurses have been taking on extra shifts for months now. She says they take requests for transfers on a case-by-case basis, because their own capacity “can change moment to moment.”
Dressler says over the last four weeks, they’ve been seeing an increase or sustained increase in COVID-19 patients. On Wednesday evening, they had six ICU beds available.
Dressler says they always try to help other hospitals who need to transfer a patient, because they may need the favor returned — but their space is also limited.
Kalmbach is grateful her situation worked out.
“You hear all about how medical staff and hospital facilities are overloaded,” Kalmbach said. “But you only think COVID. You forget that everything else is still happening.”
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