We all have our Covid pandemic war stories. Talk to anyone and it’s a challenge to not have a heavy heart or shed a tear. Yet, I’m sure that many stories can’t come close to what front-line Covid healthcare workers have had to endure for the last (almost) two years.
Whenever I can, I try to read these stories and, the other day, I read this Business Insider article about Andrew Hudson, an ICU nurse who quit after 19 intense months of working the front lines.
His experiences are harrowing, but two things jumped out at me. First,
In the early months [of the pandemic], Hudson bagged up dead patients and brought them
to the morgue…What’s worse, to protect morticians from exposure, Hudson gauzed and
taped the eyelids, nostrils, and mouth of his dead patients. "It felt macabre," he said. "It
was pretty grim to look at and felt like this feels kind of medieval in a way.”
It breaks my heart that he and others were put in such a position. So little was known in those early phases. Can you imagine being in a room with a corpse and having to gauze and tape eyelids, nostrils, and mouths? You don’t know the person, but you know the person had to die alone. You know a family lost a loved one and they couldn’t say good-bye much less have a funeral and, yet, there you are, a stranger, covering a dead person’s eyes, nose, and mouth.
This made my anger rise. Anger for all the workers forced to stare into a wall of death on a daily and nightly basis. Anger for all the families who lost loved ones and couldn’t have a funeral. Anger because I know there are people out there who doubt that someone like Hudson experienced what he described convinced that he made it all up. (I consistently see doubt of people’s personal experiences on the Next Door Neighbor App.) Anger that there are people (still!) who think that Covid is “just like the flu” and that somehow, in any given time, flu deaths are equal to Covid deaths. This, by the way, underscores how worthless our education system is, but that’s another blog rant.
I can only imagine how the horrors of Covid will haunt these front-line workers for the rest of their lives while others will merrily roam their way through life thinking, “Didn’t happen if it didn’t happen to me!” Makes me think of a NICU nurse I knew who, at the beginning of the pandemic, spread false information about how only symptomatic people should quarantine and everything should remain open like it all supposedly happened during the 1918 Spanish (really American) Flu pandemic. Not only is this untrue, but I asked this person and this person’s co-workers and friends if they understood what “asymptomatic” meant. My question never got answered, but plenty of “you sheep”-type comments were flung my way. Once again, proving our education system’s worthless especially in the sciences.
The second thing that Hudson said which jumped out at me was:
Last year also brought out aggression from patients he hadn’t seen before…Patients’ families
would tell Hudson to not intubated [sic] dying patients and instead give them the ivermectin, a
parasite killer that does not work against Covid-19. “We just feel like we’ve vanished, like we
can’t do anything,” he added. Shortly before leaving his job, Hudson recalled coming home
from his shifts feeling defeated.
If people don’t believe Covid is real, why are they seeking help at a hospital when they get sick?
OR,
If they are seeking help at a hospital, why are they then telling doctors and nurses what to do?
STAY HOME SINCE YOU BELIEVE YOU KNOW BETTER.
Re-read the line above. Keep re-reading it.
The arrogance is astounding and it is this arrogance that is contributing to the collapse of our healthcare industry. We are losing people like Hudson in droves because humans can only take so much abuse from the Arrogant and Ignorant.
My biggest wish for humanity is for people to see how connected we are. We carry germs. We carry bacteria. We carry viruses and we spread these germs, bacteria, and viruses to each other. I am humble enough to understand that much about science, and not arrogant enough to believe I know more than a virologist, someone who’s dedicated their life to the study of viruses. Part of my responsibility as a human being is to help humanity and that includes listening to what the majority of scientists, researchers, and experts say on a topic. This is called consensus. The lesson on what is majority vs minority seems to be one many people skipped.
The choices made by the Arrogant and Ignorant make my life harder right now. It also makes front-line nurses’ and doctors’ lives harder, but what the Arrogant and Ignorant fail to realize is that, ultimately, his or her choices make it also harder for him or herself. In the end, it becomes our collective story and scar. We could be helping each other, and yet….
We are forever changed in both good and bad. We are forever scathed. We are forever scarred. The biggest question is how do we handle the aftermath of all this change and all this pain. My secret wish is that we would come out of this working towards improving our education system, but that wish is crumbling with all these bans on books and theories. My not-so-secret wish is that we come out of this kinder. I have to admit that I feel the world’s candle on that wish is growing faint. But it’s not out. Not yet. Please keep it lit.
