Nurse manager
I was listening to the radio yesterday, my favorite morning show Z100. I have listened to them for years, it feels like I’m sitting around having a cuppa and a laugh with pals as the day begins. It’s not all silliness though, if there is a serious issue to address they will talk about it and as we move into the 6th week of Covid-19 their morning show continues to talk about all things funny, serious, painful and down right terrifying about this virus and the lives it is changing. Yesterday morning a nurse manager from a hospital in Queens, NY rang in. They stopped the show for him so we could listen to the conversation he had with host Elvis Duran. His sentences were often interrupted as he choked back the tears and tiredness that now fill his days. This week, he told Elvis, 8 of his patients were so critically ill with complications due to Covid-19 that they were all going to need to be intubated. The problem was there was only one available ventilator and it was up to him and his team to decide which one of the 8 was going to get the chance to survive. Without it, survival at this point he said, was not possible. He had to stop here and gather himself before continuing. Once decided he then had to sit down with the 7 other families and tell them he was not going to be able to save their loved ones. Adding to the heartbreak, these same families were not allowed to go in and be with their mother/father/daughter/son/brother/sister as they died, it is just too dangerous. The nurse manager said that the nurses try to give the dying as much comfort and love as is possible so they don’t die alone , but in an ICU unit that is over whelmed with Covid-19, this too is hard. Before he hung up he stressed again and again, as all health officials continue to do, the importance of people staying home and practice social isolating. He knows it’s not easy but there is no alternative.
Meanwhile people in high places and some very low places continue to play down the severity of Covid-19, many are even taking to the streets with their 2nd amendment, gun toting rights demanding life return to normal. But there is no normal any longer, normal is going to take time to get back to. If we rush it there will be many more nurse managers and their teams crying as they too are forced to play god with the lives in their hands.
Until the dawn of the new normal arrives, thank you, thank you, thank you to all the nurses, doctors, janitors, cooks and everyone else that is working tirelessly in the hospitals trying to keep their patients alive.