A message from a health worker
My husband is a Respiratory Therapist and there are several things he would like the public to know.
?Covid-19 is very real and can be very dangerous.
?Death isn't the only danger Covid-19 presents- most hospitalized Covid-19 who were intubated have a lengthy recovery ahead of them even after they leave the hospital. Some never return home and require nursing home care for the rest if their lives. Even mild to moderate cases can create permanent disability- I had a mild/moderate case 3/2020 and I now have heart failure caused by a cardiomyopathy which I didn't even realize that I had at the time.
?It is extremely difficult to work with severely sick Covid-19 patients, who are usually proned and more unstable than the usual very sick patients in the ICU. Critically ill Covid-19 patients are not only physically demanding to work with, but they tend to remain in the ICU much longer than usual. People become attached, even to folks who are unconscious, and losing them is incredibly painful when you've put everything you have into trying to help them. Of course, Covid-19 patients don't have to be in the ICU for their situation to affect someone. Between the Hurculean tasks of working 12–18 hour shifts as many days a week as one can manage and the emotional pain of being right up front and close to an incredible amount of suffering and death in very short periods of time, medical workers are going down. Those who can retire are doing so. Others are simply walking away from their careers. Others, like one of my husband's coworkers, keep pushing until they break. She was found catatonic the the basement of the hospital after going missing during a shift and is now in inpatient psychiatric care. She had absolutely no history of psychological problems and her home life isn't stressful. The line is buckling- these people are warriors fighting for us in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. It often takes 3 years of college education to produce a Respiratory Therapist- and years of experience to season them. We have plenty of equipment, but the human beings needed to make use of it are for practical purposes irreplaceable.
?Medical workers must also be fully geared up in personal protective equipment and those working with Covid-19 patients need to do this for most of their shifts- my husband has been working 18 hour shifts (often mandatory overtime) due to the incredible Covid surge here in Michigan. He would like everyone to know that if they think wearing masks in public is difficult, they should try wearing plastic personal protective equipment and an N95 with a surgical mask over it for 12+ hours almost every day.
My husband and his coworkers are beginning to get angry. At this point, we know what we need to do to stop the virus from spreading. They want ALL of you to begin doing it ALL of the time. They are vaccinated and they have strongly encouraged everyone around them to get vaccinated as well. Even after vaccination, wear at least a mask when around others- my husband shops in protective eyewear, an N95 mask, and has hand sanitizer clipped to his belt loop even if he just runs into a convenience store. We haven't visited our families in 13 months and have no plans to do so until the pandemic is over. He's left places where there are unmasked people or are too crowded. If everyone could see the things he's seen, they'd be doing all of those things as well.
Putting yourself at risk of getting Covid-19 is like playing Russian roulette except that all the chambers of the gun are loaded with things that range from not so bad all the way through terrible, prolonged, and painful deaths. It's the in-between that gets me- I really thought that I'd gotten lucky when I had Covid-19. I was 51, thin, and in the best shape if my life. I now have the cardiac problems of a sickly 80 year old and there's no way I can ever get back to where I was before I encountered the Covid-19 virus. And I am far from alone.