Well, my last post was early this month. To use a metaphor, at that time I was standing on the dry shores of the healthcare ocean and thinking "I wonder if the tsunami will hit us?" A few days after my post I noticed the waters start to recede, ever so slightly. The hospital volume dropped, we were wildly overstaffed for a week or two, and lots of people made jokes about hoping to get the coronavirus because then we'd get quarantined for two weeks at home.
It's now March 25, and I've found myself on that same dry shore, staring at a wall of water rushing towards me and knowing that even though I've tried to prepare it's still going to crash over everything. I'm officially fucking scared.
We've had plenty of positive cases at our hospital. I'm starting to see young, healthy people get admitted for respiratory compromise due to full blown pneumonia. We've had lots of older and higher risk people coming in, lots of whom are doing poorly. But that's all theoretical. I take care of hundreds of patients a year and don't know any of them. I don't know their life stories or kids, or inside jokes. It makes it easier to treat them, when I can view them as a medical problem in need of fixing.
But now it's real. A coworker of mine, a surgeon employed at the hospital, is the first one to be admitted from within our own ranks. He was doing well until he wasn't. Now we're wondering if he's going to be lucky and pull through this, but in reality we all know that he probably won't. And just like that, one of the people who helps keep our hospital afloat, one of the nicest people I know and such a fantastic surgeon, has been removed from the equation.
Yeah, I'm scared. And the scariest part is that this really hasn't even started yet.
***
I'm as prepared at home as possible, with a decent supply of food and water, a generator and accoutrements, and other necessary survival goods. I am not, however, emotionally prepared to lose people I care about. I was wondering what the defining moment of my life would be - some people have WW2, some remember market crashes, or JFK. I work with people too young to really remember 9/11, but for a long time I though that would be it for me. I was wrong - I think this is about to be the event that I remember for the rest of my life.
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One day I woke up and realized I'm not a baby nurse anymore. I'm not even a young nurse. I'm a real adult who has now been doing this for years, and I'm definitely expected to know what I'm doing at all times. And that's fucking terrifying.
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DISCLAIMER
HIPAA. Trust and believe, these stories are halfway made-up and halfway made up of lots of other stories. I will protect patient privacy like it's my job. Because it is.
Many of the photos showing mundane things are ones I took. As for memes and other google picture search images, I've been horribly bad at photo crediting - I will be attempting to go back through and properly credit things or remove them if I can't. But rest assured, ain't no real patient pictures up here, folks.
While I appreciate those reading the blog, I don't advertise for any website. I can only be responsible for my own opinion, and thus politely decline any offer to "host a post" or otherwise advertise something not written by me...But thanks anyway!
Many of the photos showing mundane things are ones I took. As for memes and other google picture search images, I've been horribly bad at photo crediting - I will be attempting to go back through and properly credit things or remove them if I can't. But rest assured, ain't no real patient pictures up here, folks.
While I appreciate those reading the blog, I don't advertise for any website. I can only be responsible for my own opinion, and thus politely decline any offer to "host a post" or otherwise advertise something not written by me...But thanks anyway!
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4 comments:
I wish there were words to make it better. I hope that you stay safe and healthy.
We are still on the dry beach with the water pulling away from the shore. It is terrifying. We hope we are ready but people whine about not being able to drink coffee at the nurses station and argue about PPE. I am so afraid of what is coming and we know it is coming. Stay safe as best you can. And I agree, we will be talking about this event the rest of our lives.
It's the event of my extended life. I've been around here long enough to acquire the hallmark stigmata of aging: dementia, incontinence, and arthritis. Oh..and I can't overlook my varicose veins that I consider my badge of honor from standing at my Mayo stand for so many wonderful years.
I was blessed to have only worked at charity and government hospitals. The world of corporate health care is scary to me and very proficient at making money from disease, but not the best for public health. I never thought I would live to see a day of reckoning for corporate office sitters, but this might be it.
It' disturbs me that nurses like you on the front lines must assume heroic risks and pay the price for other's bad decisions. This virus does not care if you are a Democrat or Republican. An epidemiologist should be in charge of this catastrophe.
I hope that you and your colleagues are safe and healthy
I might not be religious, but I sure as heck am saying a lot of prayers. My best to you. Eat well, get whatever relaxation you can, and be as clean as possible. You know this. But remind yourself to practice it.
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