to help us all get through this as safely as we can

This blog post has been rolling around in my head for a few weeks. The competing desire to share the bedside experience of what is happening with this latest surge of COVID, fueled by the Delta variant, keeps running up against the desire NOT to have anyone think or comment that what I am doing is anything more than it is. Which is doing a job that I love, am well compensated for, and wouldn't trade for something different. 

The need to describe what I am seeing has won out, obviously. This morning our number of hospitalized COVID patients was up around 85. We are back at that place of walking through the ICU with room after room of someone seriously ill, on a ventilator, no family here, with no end in sight. Back to the discussions of "would they want a tracheostomy" to allow more time to try and recover, even though they will not regain the quality of life they once had. We are also seeing much younger patients this time around. The mother whose baby was delivered early, the one she hasn't held or seen because she is on a vent, on ECMO. The young man who may yet need a lung transplant - which certainly does not mean a new lease on life as the median survival is somewhere around 8 years after transplant these days. Most of these patients had not been vaccinated, but not all. Some fully vaccinated individuals for a variety of reasons (other co-morbid conditions such as cancer for example) who did not develop the immunity expected from the vaccine, have been critically ill and died as well.  

At the end of last week I rotated off the COVID team for awhile. A needed change. I vacillate between wanting to punch people who have not gotten a vaccine (for whatever reason), to being sick and tired of hearing people say "get the damn shot". The vitriolic comments on a recent "Next Door" post made me sick - on both sides of the argument. I am so sad for families who can not be present for their loved one. I don't have it in me to do a half-ass job caring for unvaccinated patients with COVID who are dying, anymore than I would do less than my best for  an un-helmeted head trauma patient, someone with end stage liver disease, or heart failure who may not be in the place they are now if they had made different life-style choices.  

Where this will end I can't say. What I do know is that there are times when I am less less patient than I could be, less tolerant of others, and have been misunderstood because of a comment made before fully thinking it through. All of these thoughts circulate in a loop in my head while I wrestle with the importance of speaking up to protect our most vulnerable populations. Thank you to everyone doing your part, the best way you know how, to help us all get through this as safely, and intact, as we can.

Finally, I am incredibly grateful for nature. The morning walks, the evening sunsets, the reminders that our world is full of beauty. Still. 

Comments

[Mary]

Thank you for everything you do to take care of people. And for your candid statements about how it's all making you feel. It's hard to avoid those comments on social media, isn't it.

[Becky H.]

I appreciate your thoughtful and heartfelt observations and am so thankful to you and the many health care providers who give loving and non-judgmental care to many in need of good care…for whatever reason. I am abject over the endless politization of the world’s public health. I am not certain that I would be able to do that. But I am also thankful for the beauty and restoration we find in nature. Keep on keeping on.

[jacki longj]

Thank you carol, I like to hear your views. And, thank you for all you do.

[carol]

Mary, Becky, and Jacki: thank you for reading.

[Sharron Carleton]

The bottom line is the need to ‘ speak up to protect the most vulnerable…’ xoxo thank you

[Karen Schumacher]

I honor and thank you, Carol.
From your biggest fan in northern California

[Gill]

Thank you Carol. Even though we are an ocean apart, your descriptions are equally apt and could apply just as well here. I appreciate your observations and the "insider view" very much indeed. As Becky said, keep on keeping on. Please. And thank you again x

[SusanS]

I appreciate you! Your blog and the photographs that illustrate it is a balm to my soul. You are someone who works daily with so much suffering, and yet you tease out the beauty of the mundane. Love to you and yours.