Your Aftershave Ocean

COVID-19 is horrifying. It’s not going anywhere. It has devastated lives. It has devastated healthcare entirely. Twice in the last two weeks I’ve had to care for critically ill patients with a full patient load while they wait on an ICU bed. I have assisted a mother in passing away peacefully while her children sat in their own hospital beds requiring oxygen. And I took care of her son while he called me his guardian angel not knowing I was there on his mothers last day on Earth. I have sent home countless people on oxygen to make funeral arrangements for their family member they never got to say goodbye to. Nursing is falling apart. Nurses are quitting and getting better jobs with better pay, better hours, and better appreciation. I didn’t want to be a COVID nurse. But there’s too many COVID patients it doesn’t matter where you work in the hospital; they are there. The people who aren’t vaccinated at this point will not change their minds until they are put on bipap, shitting and vomiting, struggling to breathe and saying they are scared. They don’t change their mind until their spouse is terminally weaned and they can’t go and see them one last time. And sometimes they still don’t change their minds. For those of you who love to say “just don’t get vaccinated, then you’ll see. you won’t be laughing then.” No. They won’t be laughing. And neither will I. Neither will I or all the other nurses who are sweating their asses off under layers of PPE trying to provide care. We won’t be laughing when we have to call their families and tell them that their oxygen requirements have dramatically increased and they’re being transferred to the ICU. Just remember that while they’re getting their karma there is an entire team of healthcare workers who have to keep them from dying. And it’s not funny. Just some thoughts from a burnt out new grad nurse who is going in for another three shifts.