Beacon nurse describes emotional toll of caring for COVID patients as pandemic rages on
In his own words: Ian Klein is a Registered Nurse who holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and works at Memorial Hospital in South Bend. “I want to describe what goes on in a medical worker’s life right now. These are all my own personal experiences.”
Patient 1: Woman is admitted to hospital with COVID. Her son didn’t believe in the virus and decided to see his mom, regardless of his cough. Mom dies of COVID 10 days after contracting virus. Son left heart-broken, wishing he would have not been stubborn.
Patient 2: Male in mid-50’s comes to hospital with COVID. As patient is wheeled to ICU because he can’t maintain oxygen saturation with a nasal cannula or even BiPAP machine, he realizes that he is the only patient in there at the moment not intubated. He looks at me and asks, “Is this going to be me?” My eyes say it all. After all, what do you say.
Patients 3 and 4: Working as charge on a COVID unit. I call the Indiana Donor Network after nurse tells me one of his patients passed away. Right as I get off of the phone, the same nurse approaches me again. His other patient died. I call Donor Network back. “Didn’t we just talk, sir?” the person asks. I respond, “It’s probably best you just keep me on hold.”
Patients 5 and 6: We have a COVID patient on the unit. His wife shows up screaming at us that she demands to see him, that our rules are overblown and masks and vaccines are stupid, and she is disgusted to where America has gotten to. The next week, she dies in the ICU from COVID.
Patients 7, 8, 9…: COVID patient dies with only the nurse there to hold their hand after exhausting every ounce of skill and knowledge. It makes the nurse feel like a failure.
We fix people, we help them, sometimes it feels like we are performing miracles. But now, too often, that gift is taken from us. Taking a piece of us every time. I cannot count the number of times I’ve held a nurse’s head up, or hugged them to help them stop crying from all of the things that they have had to see and go through, up until the point where there are no more tears left.
There is so much more to say, but there isn’t the time to write it all down.
The point of all this isn’t to force you to get a vaccine; however, I would really prefer that you did.
I want to give you a glimpse into my life. And to ask for all the fake posts to stop on social media. For people who haven’t spent a single moment of their lives studying medicine to stop giving opinions on medical information that they literally have no clue what it means; they just googled something and posted it and thought it sounded smart.
We are all so tired. But medical workers show up every day to take care of you. But every time I look, one more nurse is gone, too emotionally worn to do this anymore. And if this continues, well, I don’t know what is going to happen. And it scares me.
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Nurses like Ian are the backbone of our health system. Do you think you have what it takes to become a nurse? Click here to visit our Beacon Careers page.
