One Nurse's Snapshot From Covid

I keep having the thought I should write something about Covid. I mean, I’m a critical care nurse. I’m a writer. Shouldn’t I write something about my experience at the bedside this past year during Covid?

But whenever I’ve had this thought, another voice in my head (it’s okay to have multiple voices in your head, right?) quickly answers with a resounding “No! Are you nuts? Nobody wants to read about Covid. You don’t want to read about Covid. Why on earth would you write about Covid? Besides, you know you can’t describe it all in a single blog post.”

Sometimes the hostile little voice in my head is right. Trying to describe my hospital experience this past year in one blog post would be like trying to describe my past sixteen years as a nurse in one sentence. I can’t.

There’s been too many good days, too many bad days. Days that overwhelmed, days that dragged, and everything in-between. It all blends together until I’m not even sure how to describe it anymore. It couldn’t have been all bad or else why would I have kept showing up? But it couldn’t have been all good or else why would I have kept threatening to not show up?

Nursing is a bit like parenting. You think you’ll remember every little thing, both the good and the bad, but unless you write every little thing down at the time, you start to forget until all you’re left with are snapshots. A few moments, a few stories, that stick with you. Unlike parenting though, the moments that tend to stick with you as a nurse are often the bad moments. 

But just as I don’t want the bad moments to be my only takeaway from a career in nursing (should I ever make it to retirement), I’m trying hard not to let the bad moments—and obviously there were plenty—serve as my only takeaway from Covid this past year. 

So while this snapshot by no means encompasses everything I witnessed working as a critical care nurse in the midst of a global pandemic, it is the moment that will likely stick with me the most whenever I think back on 2020.

It happened during the peak of our Covid numbers. Up until this point, another ICU had been the designated Covid ICU, and my unit would only get the occasional overflow Covid patient. But without enough ICU beds to accommodate the increasing numbers, our unit had to transition to a designated Covid ICU as well. 

The problem during this time was not only having patients as sick as it gets, but working with a staff stretched as thin as it gets. No matter how you attempted to split up the assignments, every nurse carried a much too heavy load. Which meant every nurse had to decide which corners to cut and which tasks to complete. 

During this particular shift, I was in charge. I knew we were withdrawing care on one of our patients, and I knew nobody from this patient’s family could be at the bedside because they all had Covid too. 

Here’s where I’d like to say someone—me, the patient’s nurse, the respiratory therapist, someone—remained in that patient’s room until the very end, holding that patient’s hand. But that wouldn’t be true. When you’re understaffed on a unit filled with critically ill patients that you’re still trying to keep alive, handholding is one of those corners you have to cut. 

Once the nurse and respiratory therapist removed the breathing tube from the patient, turned off all the medications, and saw that the patient wasn’t going to pass within the next few minutes, they left the room, needing to get back to their other patients.

Sometime later that morning, I heard the monitor at the nurses’ station start alarming, signaling that the patient’s heartrate had dropped to zero. Since the patient’s nurse was tied up elsewhere, I stepped into the room alone to listen with a stethoscope and confirm there was no longer a heartbeat. 

My immediate thought when I entered the room and closed the door behind me was . . . This feels weird. 

I figured it was just the weight of injustice I sensed. Knowing this patient had died alone. Knowing usually there is family at the bedside during moments like this, grieving. People who knew and loved the patient as a person, not just as a body. It didn’t feel right that I was the one in the room. It felt like one of those and all I got was this lousy t-shirt deals. Only for this patient, it would be something along the lines of I lived a meaningful life with family and friends and all I got was this lousy bedside nurse after I died.

I felt guilty, like I needed to apologize. But the longer I stayed in that room, unhooking the patient from the monitor and preparing the body to eventually go to the morgue, I couldn’t deny the sense of peace in the room. And I realized that was actually why it felt so weird.

I wasn’t used to the calm.

Outside the door, monitors continued to alarm, phones rang, IV pumps beeped, nurses rushed from one task to the other. But in here, there was quiet. The lights were off, but sunlight had filtered into the room, bringing with it a strange feeling of serenity. To be honest, I didn’t want to leave the dead body to go back to the chaos of the living. 

Every once in a while, you catch a tiny glimpse past the curtain that separates this life from the next. This was one of those moments. 

In the stillness, I was reminded that even in the heaviness of sorrow, there is peace. There is hope. There is light. I don’t know what type of faith that patient had, but I know the type of faith I have. And I believe if you cling to Jesus, the source of that peace, hope, and light, you never need fear of being alone, no matter the situation, even in death.

That’s not to say the experience didn’t weigh on our minds as nurses. A week or so later we brought it up when we had a few minutes together at the nurses’ station. “I felt bad for not staying in the room,” the nurse said.

“I know. That one’s been bothering me too.”

That was the extent of our heart-to-heart conversation, but sometimes that’s all you need to lift some of the weight and get back to work.

A lot of nurses are coming out of this initial Covid experience with snapshots that will stick with them. Moments that will bother them. Scenarios they’ll feel guilty over for not being able to do more at the time.

My only advice is to acknowledge the bad moments, hold tightly to the good. Then do what you can and get back to work.