[Reporter] The Jewish General Hospital was one of Montreal's
first designated COVID-19 treatment centres as the virus began to take hold.
Its ICU has now treated nearly 300 critically-ill COVID patients.
[Doctor] We're worried about that younger patient population.
We're worried about the longer length of stay.
The reality of each wave is different.
[Speaking French]
[Reporter] Inside 46-year-old Ramtin Saeedi struggles to catch his breath
enough to speak, but he tries.
[Reporter] He's emotional as he praises the doctors and nurses
who have helped him since he was admitted to the hospital earlier this month.
Sick with the variant first detected in the U.K.
In the ICU the COVID waves have blurred into a relentless grind.
We've been doing this consistently for over a year now.
Which is exhausting.
We're all kind of tired of it.
We're hoping that the third wave is the final wave.
It all depends on how effectively we can get the vaccine into people.
[Reporter] Saeedi's whole family was infected.
His wife and two children are now recovered
and his doctor says his condition is improving.
So he came in and has responded quite nicely to our therapy.
So what we saw was the amount of oxygen we needed to give him came down
and really the major thing is just looking at that trajectory.
[Reporter] But down the hall it's a different story.
Zannatul Ferdush barely recognizes her husband of 29 years
Shamim Mohammad.
The 62-year-old has been sick since March.
All the time he said wear mask, wear this and that.
He was like extra, extra cautious.
[Reporter] But he works in a restaurant kitchen and despite his precautions
his wife thinks he caught the virus from a co-worker during their lunch break.
She and one of their children were also infected.
For me it's a big tsunami.
It's ruined my life.
It's everything.
I have nothing.
I don't have any family, I don't have nobody without him.
Just two years before.
[Reporter] She showed us this picture of her and Mohammad
taken two years ago.
She can't believe how much the virus has changed him.
[Ferdush] Some people say COVID, it doesn't exist.
If it doesn't exist, then what is this?
My question is what is it?
Please, please, please, please.
See him?
[Reporter] It's been a long haul for Mohammad's family.
He's been in the ICU for more than a month
but Dr. Blair Schwartz urges Ferdush to be patient.
This is going to take a very long time.
[Reporter] Because the trajectory of the virus can be so hard to predict.
The frustrating part is I don't know what's going to happen to his lungs.
And so while we've seen lots of people spend weeks to months on a ventilator
and ultimately go home and we get these amazing stories that they get better.
Sometimes that doesn't happen.
And I think the frustrating part as a doc is I don't know.
[Reporter] After more than a year of uncertainty
staff are bracing themselves in case this wave gets worse.
Do you have to like brace yourself for that?
Do you have the energy?
Do I have the energy?
I'm trying to convince myself that I do have the energy, yes.
[Reporter] The stark reality of COVID-19 is the day-to-day here.
So it's hard for staff when they encounter patients
who don't even believe in the virus that's making them sick.
[Dr. Warshawsky] We have a few people who don't believe in COVID
We have people who have COVID who don't believe in COVID.
Which is awkward because it's hard to treat them at that point.
We have to try and persuade people that we really do know
what we're talking about.
We've treated a lot of patients with this condition at this point.
[Reporter] Warshawsky says ICU patients in the third wave are younger.
In part because more older people are now protected by vaccines.
But these patients stay longer and more of them need to be put on ventilators.
This is a procedure reserved for some of the sickest patients
with oxygen levels so low they need help from a machine to breathe.
[Respiratory Therapist] The decision was made to intubate to try to save this patient.
[Reporter] That's respiratory therapist Chrishni Francis at the head of the bed.
The potential exposure to the virus in moments like this
is what she and other health care workers grapple with daily.
We're putting the patient to sleep with medication
and inserting the airway which is very risky.
[Reporter] This patient was stabilized but could have weeks or even months
ahead of him in the ICU.
[P.A.] Patient getting transferred to travel elevators.
[Reporter] Saeedi is doing well enough to leave the unit.
A cleaning crew follows behind to wipe down any surface
he might touch along the way.
He's since been sent home.
For Dr. Schwartz, seeing some patients improve and eventually get better
has kept him going.
[Dr. Schwartz] That's the hope that we keep.
That's what keeps the team motivated, moralized
and it's what we're able to say to the family every day
and say, listen, I know this is tough and I know he looks sick
and I know he doesn't look anything like the man you knew and love.
But we've gotten people like this back to that
and that's really for me what keeps it
and that's the story of COVID is where this COVID coaster is going to go.
[Reporter] And as patients keep coming in
that unpredictable roller coaster continues.
And Alison Northcott joins us now from Montreal. So Allison the exhaustion from everyone there, the patients, the staff. It just jumps out at you but what else are they saying is tangibly different about this moment in the COVID crisis?
Well the patients being treated in this ICU now are primarily in their 60s and 70s
though some are younger and the way they're different from the patients in the first wave
were mostly in their 80s and 90s is that these patients tend to stay in the ICU for longer
and although their prognosis may be better
they tend to have a difficult and long recovery ahead of them.
I spoke with the wife of Shamim Mohammad who we saw in that story
and she says that her husband's condition has not really changed that much
since I saw him in the ICU and she remains very worried about him.
[Adrienne] So hard.
Alison Northcott in Montreal, this evening thank you.
You're welcome