I was supposed to go home tomorrow to visit family and friends. Sweet newborns who I’ve yet to meet and all the littles whom day to day I miss so much. I was so looking forward a trip this year free from the constraints of fear and anxiety around covid-19, instead, we’re in another covid crisis, again. This time, for us in Boston, it’s perhaps the worst yet. Not because of the severity of the illness itself, but the ongoing effects of a disease that has consumed our world. We don’t know a world without covid anymore, and this wave is bringing up a lot from the first go around. Something my coworker would call ptsd, a subject rarely researched in nurses but far too real.
Yesterday, I spent the day bouncing between a young boy receiving chemotherapy for his disease (a typical day for me), a boy admitted for aggression and uncontrollable behavior at home- now hitting and screaming, throwing things and threatening us staff, and another sweet boy from Germany who came for experiment treatment to help his genetic disease, which unfortunately has been delayed since summer because of our current state. All of this sucks, every bit of it. None of this should be happening. Kids with cancer is what we do, and that is hard enough, but now we are seeing ongoing mental health crises, sweet kids whom need help but for which we are not trained nor have the time to truly help. We instead watch these kids lash out over and over again because they are not getting the help they need. They come to the hospital to get help, and sometimes, I wonder if aside from simply keeping them safe, if we are doing more harm than good. We do our best, but the attention and support they need is more than we can give on a high acuity floor, and so we spread ourselves thin and feel like we can never give enough. We leave feeling helpless, and unfulfilled.
We have done our best over the last two years to endure, survive, persist, but I am hitting my breaking point. I think we all are. With the most recent wave of covid, now we are facing critical nursing shortages, and what we do never feels like enough. The constant sense of fear and anxiety is exhausting, with no end in sight. I leave every 12 hour day exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally, only to get some sleep and come back and do it again. I want to hold out hope, but if this wave happened unexpectedly, who’s to say I won’t happen again? We need help, we need it now more than ever.
I don’t know the answer, and I don’t even know what to believe anymore. I am glad less people are getting critically ill, I’m thankful far less are dying from this scary disease, but the crisis continues and I can’t help but wonder when it may ever subside. I wonder when we begin to change our mindsets of this disease to one we live with and shift our thoughts to have less fear. I wonder when we begin to live again, to try and address the many many consequences that have resulted from living in a world of separation, fear, and anxiety for so long.
I wonder how many more kids I will have to see contained in hospital rooms deconstructed so patients don’t rip things off the wall, brought to the hospital because they can’t be kept safe at home. I wonder how many more families I will have to see torn apart with a cancer diagnosis because they can’t be together in the hospital because of intense visitor restrictions. I wonder how many more kids I will have to see spend the last days and months of their lives isolated in hospital rooms because of what covid has turned our world into.
I have to believe things will get better, and all we can do is take it one day at a time. Thanks to the many brave patients I have witnessed take on the battle of a lifetime, I know what it means to face a challenge with courage and grace. I know that if they can endure the cards they are dealt, we too can survive this war. One day at a time, moment by moment, we will make our way. We have to.
We got this, the only way out is through.