Book Review: A Pandemic Nurse's Diary.

 

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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