Sister Story #6

So, I was emailing Congress people, because as soon as I found out that we were having a PPE shortage. I started emailing people. Because I mean that's one thing as a nurse that you feel like you should never have to worry about - going into a room whether you're going to have the equipment to protect yourself, and not only yourself but your next patient! We've always been taught one mask per patient, and all of a sudden they wanted us to make one mask last a week. And these are made of paper. They're not meant to last a week! We had nurses stapling masks to keep them together while we were in the direct vicinity of COVID, like that. It just makes your anxiety that much more high when you're having to reuse a used mask over and over again.

And you have all these people that are potential COVID patients that are testing negative, but there are so many false negatives with these tests. We had some patients, they had every symptom of COVID. They were young. They were on a vent, there is no way they didn't have COVID. Like this one lady, she was on a plane sitting next to people for her job. Probably, she said five, six times a week. She was on a plane during all of this, and she tested negative for COVID and we're all like, there's no way she's negative. There's absolutely no way. And we were having to do a bronchoscopy on her anyway, even though bronchoscopy is or one of the highest risk procedures to do on a COVID patient. I mean, you're in their lungs, you know. So that was awful.

So my ritual coming home, I make my husband unlock the basement door so I can come in down there and literally strip and put all my stuff directly in the washer. Then I go take a shower. And for a while, you know, we didn't see any family or anything. Like, we were talking about it. I went and saw my in-laws every other week basically since we've been married. I think this was the longest time we went without seeing them because I was worried that I would infect them, you know, with my in-laws being older and everything that really worried me about infecting them, or any of my other family, really. I don't want to be the cause of something horrible happening to them, and then I would never be able to forgive myself. So you know...

I get very passionate when people are on social media being very flippant about all of this. I guess, when you have literally watched someone not be able to breathe…. Like, a vent is one of the scariest things to me, just because you can't, you can't even breathe on your own. And these people are awake, like some of them are awake on a vent. They can't have any visitors. You and your team are literally the only people they're seeing and they're scared to death. You can see it in their eyes.

I mean, it's just awful. It's awful and I cannot imagine what they're going through, not even being able to see anybody or really talk to anybody. A lot of times they will have people sedated on a vent, but sometimes they have to be awake for certain medical reasons. And I just can't imagine something worse than that. I guess it hurts my feelings when you see people online, like not caring or not wearing a mask, like, why wouldn't you wear a mask?

I guess in health care, you're kind of taught you're making a difference in one person's life. And I don't quite understand how a lot of people don't have that mentality. It's really not that big. I mean, we wear masks the whole shift at work, you know, and it takes not that long to go to the grocery store or something like that. And that's all you have to do, just sanitize your hands. You know, it's just... it's little things that I feel like we could just be compassionate to try to help in any way that we can.

I think the biggest challenge is controlling the anxiety of it all. I feel like I've honestly found a new norm of anxiety that I can cope with, you know, but it did take some adjustment to get there. I was…...I was honestly really depressed for a while because it was very scary. I want to protect my family, too. I love being a nurse. And I had to kind of make up my mind because like, I felt like I was trying to think - if it does get as bad as Italy, you know, am I going to keep working? Do I feel like this is important enough to keep working? And my answer was yes. And that was scary because it almost felt like a death sentence.

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