COVID-19 — I Am a Nurse and I Have Good News
“Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in.”
~Leonard Cohen Dance Me To The End Of Love
“How worried about this do you think we need to be?”
The question was a wispy puff of smoke coming from a nurse friend of mine as she read an article on her phone about the strange virus in Wuhan that seemed more China’s problem than ours.
We live in California, and at the time of that question, Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash casted the biggest shadow in the news. California was in a state of mourning, as was most of the world, marveling at the sheer shock of how quickly and cruelly life can change. My friend and I live with avid basketball fans and I was busy that day trying to convince her that surprising them with overpriced tickets to the upcoming Laker’s game was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to be gouged alone and I know her to be a softy. She would cave.
“Oh not you too!” I moaned. I explained that I had an on-call headache ready and waiting at anytime for any talk about this virus. I knew nothing about it, and didn’t care to. I had just spent time I could never recover talking my mother off the ceiling about this virus. See, my mother works for the CDC…they just don’t know about it. She’s more of an unauthorized, unqualified, but very eager volunteer. And everything I knew about ‘the virus’ was coming from her panicked reports. “Viruses happen, mom,” I’d said, nonchalantly. “This one just happens to have an excellent marketing team.”
I took a “why worry?” position on this with my friend, certain that if this virus, famous only in our devices at the time, was a cause for concern we know where all the equipment and drugs are and everything would be fine. I certainly have had had to face harder things than a respiratory infection…hadn’t she? And I had NO time for this mystery virus that was essentially still background noise.
And then COVID-19 said, “you’re gonna make time, sis.”
If there’s one thing I can not forgive, it’s that COVID-19 made my mother right. There is literally NO WAY I can make a comeback from the time I told her she was overreacting and 60 days later nearly the whole earth shutdown. COVID-19 is my mortal enemy.
My friend did end up at that Laker’s game with us, and without either of us knowing it, it was the last sporting event we would go to for the foreseeable future. At what could only be described as break-neck speed, the virus once alive only in our devices was everywhere. “The Coronavirus” had a first name now, COVID-19, and by the way who gets to name viruses? Spanish flu sounds like something you could catch on a date, COVID-19 sounds like something concocted in the lab of a villian in a Marvel comic.
Almost overnight, COVID-19 command centers erupted, meetings were called and discussions about “the virus” were upgraded to action plans by everyone paying attention. Words like “medical draft,” “deployment,” “quarantine,” “field hospitals,” “mass triage” were now said or heard almost daily by everyone licensed in the medical field.
Perhaps the overall sluggish response to COVID-19 was the sense of it being an “over-there” problem when the news reported on Wuhan and the surge in Italy. And if it not an “over there” problem, surely young, healthy people could take comfort in it being an “other people” problem as long as it targeted the elderly or medically vulnerable. That was sad…but not quite sad enough for a rapid response.
Except….COVID-19 proved a formidable enemy as it claimed the lives of “young and healthy” people alongside the vulnerable with nothing but bewilderment left in the wake. When access to testing improved and universal screening in certain care areas in the hospital began, clinicians discovered a discouraging amount of completely asymptomatic people (some of whom have not gone on to have symptoms at any point), while also treating critically ill people of all ages, and losing many of their medically compromised and elderly patients. Our losses have also included the occasional young, healthy patient leaving doctors with more questions than answers about this confusing new virus. As time passed, while the overall survival rate was and is high, COVID-19 began to look and feel like a game of virus Russian Roulette.
Northern California, where I live, was the first area of lockdown in the country. And we prepared for the worst. We watched soberly, and grimly as New York City’s case count and death toll mounted. As talk of equipment and PPE shortages gained steam, and wartime military lingo became the new normal in hospital-speak, it began to feel like we were garnishing make-shift weapons awaiting the Night King and his army.
I am a long-time California resident, but my life, and my career started on the East Coast, which earned me first hand accounts from personal friends on the frontline. It wasn’t pretty, and while I absolutely wanted to aid in combatting this virus — between the media, personal stories, and navigating the fear for my safety from my loved ones and especially my husband’s fear for my safety, I was questioning my own sanity. Everyone not in health care was trying to talk me out of frontline work, and I was about as stressed as I can recall ever being. And I do not stress out easily.
But here’s the thing, and stick with me, because I’m getting to the good news. In the earliest and scariest days of pre-surge lockdown, one of the places I drew the most comfort was at the hospital. Believe me, that was about the last thing I expected. But sheltered in place with too much media, and too much poor information compounded the misery of the dangerous virus that some Americans still believed was a rumor.
At the hospital, I was able to look into the eyes of other people as crazy as I who wanted to be part of the solution. At the hospital, we talked soberly, honestly and professionally about the virus and we strategized accordingly. At the hospital, we looked at each other and knew that we would do what we always do in the face of an illness or injury we hate. When the surge came, we would put on gear and fight crime.
And the surge never came. At least not here. We have had cases, and we have had losses, but our area looked nothing like New York. I work for an urban, high-capacity hospital, and if there were a surge, we would have been one of the most impacted. In fact, the overall patient census has been LOW a great deal of the time in lockdown. With lockdown “elective” surgeries and procedures were cancelled and fear kept many people out of the Emergency Room unless they had an actual emergency. Between the lower patient census, and the disallowing of visitors at the hospital, the halls of our normally bustling urban epicenter were eerily quiet. We were not New York.
And yet I am New York. I listened with intense empathy to frontline workers back east. I listened to the updates of President Andrew Mark Cuomo almost daily. I cried for the losses, the grieving families, and the commitment of the frontline. In my opinion, all of us in the US healthcare system were absolutely New York.
As I mentioned, I am from the East Coast, but not New York City. However, my concerned searches about New York were excessive enough to be noticed by Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads and I have had a wild ride over the years. Facebook Ads has thought I was a doctor, an attorney, and Facebook Ads has also diagnosed me with autism on at least two occasions (which, fair enough, that diagnosis would actually explain a lot about me). But now Facebook Ads is sure it finally has me figured out and I am a “New York girl living in a California world.” No exaggeration, here’s one of the actual ads:
So after all that fear, and worry and stress we are here. We are all sick to death of restrictions and it is quite clear that the devastation from this virus will have long term effects that may be more dismal than our current death toll. I would never have imagined that in the days when I woke up in dread every single day about the prospect of a surge, about the ominous prognosis for virus patients on ventilators, about catching or carrying this virus, that the basic concept of wearing masks in public would have become partisan. I truly never saw that coming. I could write a whole separate article about that, and maybe I will. What I will say is, the good news for you is that professionals in the healthcare system do not have the option of being partisan in how we handle a pandemic. We don’t have the option of being governed by memes, unqualified spokesmen, and viral videos in how we handle a pandemic. We get to use our best available information, our experience, our instincts and our hearts to make this awful time as human as possible.
As we soldier on, and combat the pandemic and whatever future it brings in public health and hospitals, it has become clear that we also have an equally threatening enemy and that’s the info-demic. Misinformation, half-truths, poorly reported and calculated statistics have all started a fire that I don’t believe can be put out. Healthcare workers were “heroes” in the beginning of this, and now I’m seeing a seething reversal. There are plenty among us that feel doctors and nurses are contributing to “fear mongering” in the “COVID-19 scam.” That’s just weird. Nurses have not been rated as the most honest and ethical profession for 18 years straight by accident. The virus is real, it’s not the flu, and this is not a drill.
I am ASTOUNDED by the amount of couch-based experts that have emerged over the last few months with instructions on how to handle the virus, how this is all just a flu, and how everyone who tries to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are sheeple or working for Bill Gates. So much about this virus has left scientists and doctors perplexed, but if you or someone you know has all the answers, by all means, please put on some pants and head to the frontline. Don’t hoard your sage advice or waste it on your barely-read Facebook feed. Lead us, oh wise one(s).
Here’s the good news, there will always be people willing to run into the burning building, this I know. No matter how much irrational, self-centered behavior you see that might discourage you — hoarding, theft, disregard for human life — I know that you can name at least one local act of humanity in this time period that reminded you of the good in the world, I know I can. And I will let you in on a secret about what I noticed about the pandemic in the hospital setting — it brought us as professionals closer together. Hospital work is not for the weak, we are a pretty tough crowd. And sometimes that can cause rifts and challenges that are hard to resolve. But in the wake of Coronavirus 2019, egos have largely been set aside and I have seen unprecedented unity, peaceful communication, teamwork, and compassionate care for both patients and each other.
And if you or someone you love has the misfortune of being hospitalized, I promise on chocolate that that is incredibly good news for you.
