OPELIKA, Ala. – A Christmas tree stands outside the intensive care room where a man stricken by COVID-19 lies unconscious, a machine breathing for him.
A few feet away, a plastic snowman adorns the door of another patient whose face is barely visible behind ventilator tubes.The decorations are "a way to let family members know that we’re trying, and we love these patients and we want them to feel like it’s Christmas as much as we can,” nurse Carla Fallin said, standing just outside one of the rooms at East Alabama Medical Center.While parades, shopping and Christmas tree lightings go on around them, nurses and doctors who've spent agonizing months caring for the ill are doing what they can to get through the holiday season, which many fear.