FB post from a daughter of a friend in MI:
Im sharing this post from my labor and delivery colleague Angela Gogolowski. There was protest of the state at home order extension at our state capitol. Im really sure there was not a single health care worker in attendance.
Angela Gogolowski you put it all so perfectly.
“I am tired, I am scared and I have had enough. If you support those people today you do not support me. Kindly unfriend me and carry on with your lives...
I am saddened by the events today in Lansing. I just do not understand what people do not get. They believe that this virus is not a big deal because of numbers. Numbers they do not understand. They say the flu kills more people every year. Ok well "flu season" runs over several months not one. This country has lost a lot of people in one month's time. That is not the same. I have been a nurse for 15 years, that is 15 flu seasons I have worked through. I have worked through SARS, and MERS. Never have I ever seen anything like this. You sit there and you hear over and over on the PA, "rapid response to xyz room, anesthesia stat to xyz unit, code blue xyz room, over and over again. Sometimes as many as 10 times in a shift. Before this, I have never experienced that.
I am so frustrated. I wish we could film inside the hospitals what it is really like. Remember last week at Sinai Grace Hospital.. emergency room staff were asked to leave because they refused to accept the unsafe staffing ratios and the day shift had to work 24 hours. Most of you couldn't work a twelve hour shift as a nurse let alone 24. Patients are dying in hallways of the ER because the nurses can't tend to them quickly enough and they pass before they can be helped.
Operating rooms, PACU's are being transitioned to makeshift ICU's to care for these patients. Operating room nurse who do not normally perform patient care are being trained to work as ICU nurses.
Patients dying without their loved ones near them due to visitor restrictions in the hospitals but also in the nursing homes. Mothers with COVID being separated from their infants and not being able to hold them skin to skin at birth and not able to breast feed them.. Little infants fighting for their lives in the NICU. A new mother on the vent for four weeks fighting for her life, never once meeting her baby..a beloved grandmother in a nursing home for a month with no contact with family passing away and no funeral to honor her life. Labor and Delivery nurses gowning up head to toe for a simple delivery even if she is not COVID because you never know. The impersonal way we have to participate in labor and delivery of which used to be an intimate experience, is now formal and feels weird.
Fear every time I walk through those hospital doors, fear of my patients, fear of my coworkers, fear of giving this to my family. A constant cloud of anxiety. The feeling of not being properly protected (having to wear and keep the same n-95 mask for who knows how long) knowing full well they are not meant to be used for days on end. Staying away from my husband and kids for two weeks after I was exposed to a patient before we had PPE on our unit... My kids counting down the days until they can "kiss mommy again".
New nurses just out of school in December trying to figure out how to be a nurse while dealing with this pandemic, maybe thinking when this is over I am done. Experienced nurses are saying" this is my last pandemic," contemplating a new career when this is over.
I could go on, but God Forbid people are asked to keep their little happy asses at home and sit the f*** down for two more weeks and they cannot do it. Protesting and blocking the streets of Lansing, blocking ambulances from transporting critical patients to Sparrow Hospital. Are you kidding me? Are we that self-absorbed and wrapped up in ourselves that we can't do what is best for society for a little while longer.
You all stabbed each one of the healthcare workers in the back today with your actions. Don't worry when you get sick we will still take care of you, because this is what we do.”
