A NURSE'S DILEMA-Covid Chronicles

                                   



It has been a few shifts since i have taken care of  Covid patient and i feel some kind of hope for now. That  being said, the country opened up and eased quarantine restrictions last week and sadly, there are sh*** a** people living life as if nothing had happened, as if the world just decided to let everyone on leave to enjoy the pleasures of being home!.
Keep your distance!.
If that’s impossible, wear your dem mask! Its all jolly go round till you end up in a ventilator or more-so 6 feet under!

I've been on Annual leave and since I couldn't go anywhere, I spent that time reflecting and digesting what us, critical care workers went through during the Pandemic! I suprised myself at how heavy this all felt and the anxiety it causes to imagine we could do it all over again in the case of a second wave. As most are reminising how they missed the parties, here are some of the things that i, as an icu nurse reminisced about.

The shifts were crazy, patient-nurse ratio was higher, and we were fighting the  unknown, many critical patients lying there connected to all machines possible counting on us, their families were counting on us. The need to do them justice was heavy and justified. We struggled through the decisions, who deserved more of our time, who qualified than the other? How do we calm ourselves down on the choices we made, how do we overcome our guilt for not being able to handle it all, to make them all deserving?
As one of my collegues rubbed in a hug, she held me up by reminding me that we were trying our best, that we did everything we could, we learnt a lot, we did well and we should be at peace with the situation! It was a pandemic and we faced it head on. It was scary, people just dying, but we showed up daily and hit agonizing shifts trying to save them all.

The anxiety about the prospect of  PPE shortage was real, even though i was lucky to work in a place which initiated proper PPE at the beginning, making a decision to leave a Covid area just to go pee was an agonising decision, we might laugh about it now but at that time our minds raced to, waste of PPE= shortage of PPE=catching Covid! So we danced to distract our minds from Pee time! Award me a medal for my overdramatic reaction to toilet breaks. I gave people who wanted toilet break in between a side eye! Like you just gonna go waste that PPE? how dare you?. Forgive me my friends, paranoja was real! Lol. The toilet cop has retired!.

The biggest dilemma, as excited as we got to watch patients wake up from comas and get off the ventilators was to explain to them what had happened. I will never forget how i broke the news to one patient and the total disbelief in her face that she had covid! I really wanted to wait for her to be fully able to digest the news but the sight of us all gowned up like we were in space confused the heck out of her. She asked why we were dressed like that and i had to explain about this virus that has caused a world wide pandemic. She said she remembered hearing of it in the news. I explained thats why we are all dressed up to protect ourselves from catching the virus! She immediately asked in shock, 'you mean I have the virus? Does every patient in this room have the virus?
‘Unfortunately yes’....I was holding onto her hand, just looking at her shocked face, it was like being given a diagnosis for the first time of a deadly disease.
 It was relieving and a major smile for her to learn that she was actually coming out of it and not at the beginning of it. Learning that you have been in a coma for 6 weeks is very heavy on patients, they asked endless questions on their family, their spouses, their kids! The anxiety!!.

We got very exhausted, we burnt out, we cried in between shifts and at home, but we showed up, we showed up for extra shifts, we pulled in extra hours, we cried with families when they came to say goodbye, we cried with them on FaceTime with their relatives, we celebrated the little milestones with them. We felt guilty for not having enough time with dying patients, for not having time to talk to relatives on the phone, we felt guilty for shouting when exhaustion and frustration overwhelmed us. We hugged a lot. We were more kind, but beyond all, my most vivid memory is exhaustion and tears.

We want to thank our spouses, our kids, our family and friends for checking on us, for zoom talks and zoom wine meetings, they kept us sane. Thank You for listening and holding us tighter.

We hope the public will be more responsible post lockdown, We don't want to do over again. What we want is a pay rise.

WEAR YOUR MASK


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