But isn’t this like, your Super Bowl?

You signed up for this...right?

“You signed up for this.”

“Well, you’re getting paid a lot.”

That’s just some of the things people have said to medical professionals who have voiced how difficult healthcare is during this pandemic.

First of all, no, this isn’t our Super Bowl. My version of the Super Bowl is that one time my patient crashed with a tension pneumothorax (air escapes into the pleural lining, collapsing the lungs and heart, and needs immediate intervention to prevent death) and I jabbed an 18 gauge needle in the intercostal space between the second and third rib and there was a huge WHISHHHHH of air and their lung reinflated and they didn’t die. That was my Hail Mary touchdown pass as the game wound down, ok? I don’t consider more than 350,000 people dying a Super Bowl moment. It’s a fucking travesty. 

Second of all, I didn’t sign up for this, because when I was in school, watching viral zombie apocalypse movies, they were teaching us in school the whole theme of these fucking movies, which was EVERYONE would want to stop the whole thing. Work together and shit. Anyone who didn’t want was kind of....DEAD. Or kicked out of the group. 

Third of all, all the money in the world couldn’t make up for the damage that has been done to my mental health. There’s no amount of fucking counseling that will fix the helplessness, anger, fear, and hopelessness that this last year was. Am I grateful to be employed? Not struggling financially? OF FUCKING COURSE.

But let me be perfectly clear about what this pandemic has done to me. I was driving home from work sometime in November. All day there were admits held in hallway beds, minimal space to treat patients, and an overwhelming sense of failure. That no matter how hard I worked, how smart and efficient I was, it wasn’t going to be enough. Not for this surge, which seemed it was never going to end. For all the days after. And I thought about just jerking the wheel, at 85 miles per hour, and seeing what happened. One thing for sure, if I didn’t die, I definitely wasn’t going to have face going in for awhile. 

Because for days I’d driven to and from work thinking I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE. I felt my chest tighten every time I thought about work. I wasn’t sleeping. I snapped at my daughter. On my days off, I sat in my recliner, and thought about 2019, when I was writing stories and publishing and getting reviews and my whole future seemed bright, like a new copper penny. Everything now was overcast, and every time the sun graced me with its light, I felt pissed off. How dare the sun shine when the world is a dark and treacherous place where people die because other people won’t wear a fucking mask to the grocery store? Because it is THAT simple. 

That thought I pushed away, drove home. But it didn’t leave my mind. I didn’t stop thinking that death might be better than what I currently had going on.

It’s not my first battle with depression. When my son passed away, it was a struggle to keep living. So after a few days of nonstop “of I wreck my car no one will know it was on purpose” I woke the fuck up and texted the counselor who helped me after Noah passed away. I texted him 911 I need some damn help and I got into therapy and it helped. 

But that’s the dark place I found myself in. It’s still a dark and dreary place, but sometime the light shines through. In my daughter’s laugh. Writing these posts. That one hour a week where I get to talk my dark shit out. And I met Cassie, online, and we started talking and she saved me too. Because I could write her and say this is terrible this is the worst I’m so scared and angry and overwhelmed and all the things nurse related and it was RELIEF.

But I’d give all my bonus money back and then some to never have this pandemic.

The thing about COVID nursing (and doctoring and respiratory therapying) is that it feels like we are so alone and no one knows what we’re going through. There’s the world that’s inside the hospital and the one outside of it, and half the outside world doesn’t believe the inside world’s first person accounts of the terror and pain and sadness. 

January, 2021, and I feel the way I did in November—that my world has stopped, been frozen in this cycle of work-sleep-repeat. That everything I’m giving is for COVID and I don’t really exist outside of my job right now. 

I’ve done some things to combat that—taking a couple weeks vacation in March. Limiting extra shifts. Outlining a new novel. Submitting trunk stories. Forcing myself to reach out. Renting a movie for $20 because I wanted to see it. But I MAKE myself do these things. I don’t enjoy them. I’m hopeful one day I will. One day, I’ll turn my face to the sun and enjoy it. I’ll publish again. I’ll be a writer and a runner and a movie buff and all the things I was before COVID. 

I did not sign up for this. I am not a hero. I am a person doing the best job I can under extremely difficult circumstances, and it’s wrecking my life, so please don’t tell me to be grateful for it. Just wear a mask and social distance and meet me on the other side of this, ok?

— The Midwestern One