I am writing this letter to give you an inside look at life of a nurse over the past two years. I am writing to tell you that I am not okay, and we are not okay, but we are doing our best. I am writing to ask you, beg you, to please do better, because with this latest surge we are barely holding on.
I work on a pediatric oncology unit, so our experience has been very different than that of the adult world. I will be the first to admit that we are not really on the “front lines” of covid, with numbers being very low up until this most recent surge, in which the numbers still pail in comparison to our adult nursing colleagues. What they have witnessed over the past two years is unbearable, and the fact that some are still showing up is a beyond comprehendible to me. The death they have seen in unimaginable. I have seen death, but seeing others die alone? That’s entirely something new. As a nurse, you do what is right by your patients, and so I have no doubt those nurses have held the hands of those dying alone, and loved them through their last breath. Their hearts have no doubt broke over and over again, but sometimes, you wonder how many times it can break before you cannot go back. To me, those nurse are such heroes, and I have so much respect for how bravely they have shown up when no doubt their own walls were crumbling.
For us in the pediatric world? It’s been an entirely different experience, but one also marred by separation and isolation of our pediatric warriors. With strict visitation policies in place, I have watched families be torn apart and completely isolated. I have watched a sweet teenage boy spend nearly 9 months in the hospital without his 5 younger siblings who he adores before going home on hospice because his treatment didn’t work. I witnessed a sweet boy born to the most wonderful parents but with a devastating diagnosis spend the first and only 8 months of his life this side of heaven mostly in the hospital walls. We became their family, because without visitors very few knew the strength, beauty and pure joy of this sweet boy during his time here on earth. I witnessed a young girl take her last breaths, after listening to her mom express just the week prior how she has barely seen her daughter except across a porch outside to protect her daughter over the last year. She thought she had more time, and now she had to say goodbye. I have walked into parents crying at night because not only are they scared but they feel so isolated and alone. Not only is their own world crumbling as their child battles cancer, but the outside world continues to be marred by fear and anxiety, hatred and divisiveness.
While our adult colleagues battled covid, we did our best to love our patients and families as our own as they navigated the pediatric oncology world alone within our walls. Without support from the outside world, we became all they had. The separation between work and home because so blurred, as they too became all we knew while isolating at home.
Then, after about a year we hit our first surge, but I’m not talking covid, I’m talking the mental health of our youth. Our ED has been full of young kids- aggressive, suicidal, homicidal- all brought into the hospital for help because they were not safe at home. We have had upwards of 70 patients in the hospital boarding (waiting for an inpatient psych facility placement), all requiring sitters at the bedside to ensure they are safe. Sometimes this is staff, sometimes this is security, but these kids cannot be alone. One day I walked through the ED to go help one of our patients, to see the halls lines with security guards, all sitting in the halls outside the many rooms full of patients waiting to be admitted for psychiatric support. Our youth are not okay, and we don’t have the capacity to help them. They come for help, but we put them in rooms where they wait for weeks or months on end with security guards at their bedside to keep them safe. We are not trained in this, but we’re doing the best we can. I have witnessed patient punch holds in the walls, threaten to punch my coworkers, run out in the hallway trying to leave only to be tackled by security and restrained by 6 adults. I have taken care of a patient who at 2am the night prior had tweeted “should I kill myself” to which she got many yeses and so she tried. I have spent hours in a covid isolation rooms with a teenage girl having a mental break while she tried to slam her head into the wall. I walked out with deep lines in my face from an N95 . I have walked into too many rooms boarded up with everything on the walls removed so that the patient cannot destroy the environment or hurt themselves. I have seen the pictures drawn by kids of who they want to kill next. I have been in one room pulling a coworker back while a patient is threatening to hurt her, banging on the walls, to then walk into the next room to check on a parent who woke to the banging, whose own child has a terminal diagnosis. He tells me “I understand why she’s angry,” to which I try to explain that is it not because she is dying like his daughter whom somehow lies peacefully asleep in the bed right next to us.
I heard the cries of a dear friend and mother after she lost her baby, to then have to walk into another patient’s room down the hall whom wanted to kill herself. I have walked in between too many rooms next to one another where one is fighting for their life, and the others wants to take their own. We want to help these children fight for their life too, because mental illness is so so real, but we don’t know how. We don’t have the training, the expertise, the staff, the time, and it’s hurting us all. We all are broken, and we will never be the same. What we have seen and experienced this past year is incomprehensible, and yet, we are still standing.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s the strength and resiliency of the human spirit. It’s the love that exists among us that keeps us coming back. It’s the way in which we lift each other up, hold space for the tears, and still find little moments to smile and laugh that keeps me humble. I am so inspired by those who show strength beyond measure, whether holding their son through is last breath, being vulnerable in asking for help, or showing up time and time again to battle for one’s life, whether physically or emotionally. We all fight our own battles, and never has the rawness of our human nature been so clear.
But here’s the thing, when I leave those hospital walls, I see a different side. I still see people fighting over vaccines. I see politicians spewing hate. I see violence on the tv, racism running rampant, and so much divisiveness. Instead of using a global pandemic to unite us, we just might be more broken than ever. But let me tell you, if you want to see what’s true, what’s real, what’s important but also how broken we are, just walk the halls of hospital and it will tell you a different story.
So I ask, please be kind. Please spread love and be gentle to those around you. Choose to believe in the good of people, and fight for what’s right. Stand up for truth, for justice, for a kinder and safer world and human race. Believe that we can come together, because I promise you we are all the same underneath it all. Our future, our children’s future, the lives around us, it all depends and starts with the individual. With being kind, with choosing what’s right over what’s easy, and choosing to be brave enough to do things differently. It’s easy to spread hate and turn away, it’s takes courage to stand up, be seen and show up for those around you. Help us to help those who need it most. We’re in this together, whether you want to be or not, so let’s make the most of it. After all, we’re only given one life, so let’s make it count.