It is difficult to imagine how this pandemic ends. Does it play out regardless of what we do? How do we make sense of a world that is so vastly different? As health care providers, knowledge is power, but it also gives us more anxiety and more awareness of the dangers around us.
My husband and I began watching the Covid-19 numbers in early January. I remember sitting in our living room during a typically dark, cold Minnesota Winter day and discussing how it was going to go down. We debated going to the "big city" the first weekend of February for fear that it had already made its way to the United States. My husband plotted graphs and looked at the exponential growth, and he made predictions about what might happen if it did get out of China. We bought extra food, essentials, and began to save money. We talked late into the night about the potential scenarios that might unfold.
And, Waited
I watched, in horror, as it began to make its way around the world, and everything that we talked about in late-night conversations started to materialize. My husband and I wished that we could be wrong. The lack of PPE and the rate of health care worker infection weighed heavily on our minds. We were already homeschooling and had begun stocking up, so when things shut down, we were already reasonably prepared. Few things changed in our daily routine, except the loss of a once a week preschool for our youngest, church for all of us, and an evening kids club and date night for the two of us. We are both in the high-risk category, so we hunkered down and waited ... and waited ... and waited ...
Now, the Uncertainty
I was fortunate (or unfortunate enough to be high risk) to be able to be off work for a while. I am headed back in a few weeks after spending an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime Summer with my husband and three young kids. I am anxious about how I will assimilate back into nursing. I am apprehensive about how I will feel coming home to my family after 12 hours of potential exposure. I am still fairly worried about the PPE situation. I have little trust in the government agencies who are guiding our direction in this pandemic.
At the end of the day, however, I am just weary. I am tired of seclusion, but also feel safer in it. I am tired of thinking about the future outcome for myself, my family, our finances, my world, OUR world. I am tired of the uncertainty. I am sad for my children and how this is all going to affect their future.
Questions Unanswered
How long do we do this?
How long do I go without seeing any extended family for fear of exposing them, or us?
How long do I hesitantly go out in public, debating whether I should wear a mask when no one else is?
How long do we keep our already homeschooled children away from social networks and peers?
How long do we stay home from church, our community lifeline?
How do we prepare financially, mentally, spiritually?
How do we, as a collective body of healthcare providers, ensure that the career we chose is honored and protected?
I did not sign up to go to war. I signed up to care for people, show compassion, educate, and advocate, but not at the cost of my own life. My family, indeed, never agreed to be exposed to the dangers that I may face when I go to work. How do I justify the costs for them?
These are all rhetorical questions and each of us has our own set of questions, all with no concrete answers. How does this end? I suspect it will play out regardless of what containment measures are put into place. It only takes one moment of weakness to be potentially exposed.
What are your questions? Your answers? How in the world does this end?
True. Yet the sad irony is that had they just done what they should have : distanced, worn masks and refrained from what they should have: thrownng crowded protests and harassing Govenors trying to do the right thing by insisting they open prematurely and throwing out all common sense just to please the Great MAGA demagogue, then they might have saved small businesses, the health sector and the economy. Sadly, what they did was ensure the demise of both.
Um... the protesters I saw rioting, looting, destroying, and burning stuff down were definitely not supporters of the President. They don’t even believe in our Republic or the ethos of Democracy. That was radical socialism, the historical precursor to Communism, which has killed over 100 million people in its short history.
Um... the protesters I saw rioting, looting, destroying, and burning stuff down were definitely not supporters of the President. They don’t even believe in our Republic or the ethos of Democracy. That was radical socialism, the historical precursor to Communism, which has killed over 100 million people in its short history.
If you want to make that leap, then then you have to make it on the other side too, that they were fighting radical Fascism, which has be responsible for quite a few deaths as well.
Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.
5 hours ago, damiorifice said:
Um... the protesters I saw rioting, looting, destroying, and burning stuff down were definitely not supporters of the President. They don’t even believe in our Republic or the ethos of Democracy. That was radical socialism, the historical precursor to Communism, which has killed over 100 million people in its short history.
You must have missed the armed protesters in Michigan.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Or missed the fact that a healthy percentage of the rioters were white supremacist apologists, Boogaloo Bois and the like, trying to incite violence between police and BLM protesters. It was a strategy clever enough to fool lots of simple thinkers.
So if Fauci decrees tomorrow we can only be out in public with Hazmat suits on, we all have to blindly follow and accept it?
Are you really a nurse? Because your post history is 100% political and arguing against extremely basic things that everyone in healthcare knows. You don't have to be a nurse to understand face masks, we teach the secretary at the front desk about this stuff.
I don't buy it. There's no way you went through 4 years of college for your BSN to come out knowing less about this than an un-certified aide who isn't even out of orientation yet.
On 7/16/2020 at 11:31 AM, TheDudeWithTheBigDog said:
I don't buy it. There's no way you went through 4 years of college for your BSN to come out knowing less about this than an un-certified aide who isn't even out of orientation yet.
You don't have to buy it. I don't engage in ad hominem personal attacks, anyway.
By the way, you should bring up your "face masks is common-sense" argument up with Fauci, since he's flip-flopped his story since March:
If you want to make that leap, then then you have to make it on the other side too, that they were fighting radical Fascism, which has be responsible for quite a few deaths as well.
We don’t have anything that even remotely resembles fascism in this country. We have a representative republic with three well defined, separate, and balanced branches of government that keep each other in line. To claim otherwise is less than rational.
Or missed the fact that a healthy percentage of the rioters were white supremacist apologists, Boogaloo Bois and the like, trying to incite violence between police and BLM protesters. It was a strategy clever enough to fool lots of simple thinkers.
If you really believe that conspiracy theory, I can see no rational middle ground upon which we could meet. White supremacists represent an absolutely tiny fraction of the population; not nearly large enough to account for the chaos we witnessed.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
25 minutes ago, damiorifice said:
We don’t have anything that even remotely resembles fascism in this country. We have a representative republic with three well defined, separate, and balanced branches of government that keep each other in line. To claim otherwise is less than rational.
Nonsense...don't squint so hard to try to make Trump's lawless and corrupt authoritarian agenda look like a representative republic. The facist trappings are glaringly obvious.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
On 7/16/2020 at 12:26 PM, damiorifice said:
If you really believe that conspiracy theory, I can see no rational middle ground upon which we could meet. White supremacists represent an absolutely tiny fraction of the population; not nearly large enough to account for the chaos we witnessed.
That tiny fraction has always had a wide sympathetic support which allows them ability to achieve considerable division, oppression and aggression. That tiny fraction had members in police,on the bench, in state and national political positions. There's a white supremacist writing presidential speeches right now for the white supremacy apologist in the White House.
Here are the articles I found in a quick search of mask use and transmission. The difference is that many of us adhere to the idea of "the greatest good for the greatest number of people" idea, instead of what is good for one. I understand the issue about personal freedom and liberty. Unfortunately, in our country as compared to others,(Japan, South Korea, Germany) we have gone so far away from nationalism and national unity in our search for personal liberty and freedoms. I typically do NOT like the government dictating what I can and cannot do, but in this particular situation, I think that as a country, we are doing a huge disservice to our own people to not have mandated mask use. It should be about protecting our fellow countrymen. This pandemic could have been an opportunity for national unity instead of more division. That was my hope once I saw all of this happening, and it has not come to pass.
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Um... the protesters I saw rioting, looting, destroying, and burning stuff down were definitely not supporters of the President. They don’t even believe in our Republic or the ethos of Democracy. That was radical socialism, the historical precursor to Communism, which has killed over 100 million people in its short history.