If you think you know all about COVID, think again. This first responder’s must-read diary is a nonfiction piece, a rare account of a warrior on the front line, written by Nurse T, a critical care professional with 20 years of hospital duty, and Timothy Sheard, a retired nurse of 40 years. It is a timely, chilling, intimate journey through the diabolical horror of the COVID 19 pandemic, from March 25, 2020, to August 15, 2020, in a New York Hospital. It works as a powerful linear piece with a sense of urgency written in first-person as told by Nurse T. You are going to experience many OMG moments listening to the hospital staff make unbelievable discoveries about this virus based solely on their observations! You will enjoy the illustrations! The cover is a generic version of how the nurses looked as they fought this pandemic together.
The chapters read like flash-fiction-zip and are rhythmically
consistent, largely due to the no-nonsense style and the strength of the
narrators’ voice. Too often, diary entries are disjointed with navel picking
meanderings and details that no one cares about. You won’t find that here.
Promise. It is action-driven, in the present tense, and fast-paced in
real-time, like a movie. Big plus, you can enter this book at any point and be
caught up in the drama. I read it in one afternoon because I couldn’t put it
down and look forward to re-reading it again. I came away inspired, horrified,
and in awe of the hospital community.
Although Nurse T is our witness and guide, there is very little
of her personality in this book. It could be because she is afraid of
professional retaliation, and those details would give her away. On the other
hand, what really matters is happening moment by moment, and in this COVID
pressure-cooker, personal reflections just have to wait. But I would have liked
to get to know Nurse T a bit more to increase my empathy for her.
It’s a brave piece about PSTD in the making on American soil, in
our hospitals with people we see every day. But unlike soldiers at war who are
protected by the government, the hospital staff in our communities were not.
That hit me hard. As the pandemic started to spread, I figured that hospitals
had everything under control. They were saving people, they knew stuff. Now I
know that is simply not true, and I feel helpless.
“We are shooting in the bloody dark!” a doctor yells as another
patient dies. Yet through the dark, Nurse T finds a level of heroism, courage,
and compassion akin to that of a soldier in battle, which she uses to fight the
suffering COVID-19 brings. And if that’s not bad enough, the hospital is
plagued by an ineffective bureaucratic system stretched to the limits, barely
able to pay staff, pathetic in their attempt to protect her and her colleagues
either physically or emotionally. I felt like I was looking through Nurse T’s
eyes in the ICU at the chaos; the blood pressure machines, the constant
monitoring of oxygen levels, and the endless flatliners, then taking a split
second to wolf down a piece of pizza or open a gift bag from the Red Cross.
Nurses, doctors, and housekeepers were all profoundly shaken, helpless, and
confused by this mysterious, deadly virus that caused a fury of suffering and
confusion. The first responders who walked among the dead and the dying were
simply not prepared. Add a political public healthcare disinformation campaign
that suggested people drink bleach, and you have a perfect storm.
We give guns to our soldiers, bullets, boots, protective gear,
you name it, but to Nurse T and her colleagues? Nothing. They received used
gowns and sweaty surgical masks, still they showed up to face an enemy no one
knew anything about. How many of us could do that when there is a COVID bomb
going off around us?
As Nurse T rushes from room to room intubating patients, she
wears the same PPE as the day before. When her patients get delirious and panic
because they feel like they’re suffocating, she straps them down so they cannot
rip the tube out of their bodies and go into cardiac arrest. When they are
animated in terror and fear, fentanyl — the primary opiate infusion used to
sedate them is running low, morphine is gone, and Ativan desperately short.
Nurse T is stunningly frank. She and her colleagues are
emotionally numb, their nerves are shattered, they can’t sleep or eat, are
developing PSTD, breaking down, and terrified they might bring the virus home
to their families. You’d think that would be enough to quit, but that option
never crosses her mind. Not even once. In fact, the energy in the hospital is
not one of defeat but of warrior-like determination for life, and that is
reflected in the intimate moments in this diary with not only the dying, but
the dead. I was struck by the entry in which the staff still had the compassion
to clean the body of a loved one who had passed, gently rub Vaseline on the
eyelids to keep them shut, wrap them in clean sheets and call their family.
Touches like these helped me understand the soul of the caretaker.
At the end of this book, there is an interactive self-help
section. There are healing meditations and writing therapy exercises that deal
with sorrow, anger, loneliness, vanquishing painful feelings, and the most
important, guilt. I did all of them, and they helped. Although I am not a
health professional, I learned that COVID affected me in ways that I still
don’t understand. Adding them was a compassionate choice with the optic to
heal…the theme of the book.
The surgical realism in this book has one clear message. Nursing
is a calling, not just a job. And Nurse T is one of many of our urban warriors,
and we are blessed to have them.
As the patient cried out for help, the caregiver manages a
grin, a smile behind the mask, and lays a gentle hand upon the suffering. The
bond is strong. It cannot be broken. Not even Death can sever it. (A
Pandemic Nurses Diary)
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