2020
I have been working on a small book about grief, and have put some of the chapters in this blog recently. I am currently working in hospice so grief is kind of a constant where I work. Our place of business is closing soon so there is a lot of grief amongst the staff related to the loss of employment, memories, patients, stability, co-workers, etc. Grief is all around and the different ways in which we express it are so varied. From the order in which we go through the grief stages to the emotions expressed, it is all so different.
I have been binging a Netflix drama the last couple of weeks while I’ve had a respiratory infection and having no energy for much else. The last episode I watched brought me to tears and reminded me of how I hold grief close and deep and don’t express it until my body can’t hold it anymore. The show was about doctors and nurses in a hospital at the start of March 2020. It brought me to tears and bubbling up emotions that I had no idea I had in there. So much of what we nurses went through in 2020, and since, has been hellish, and yet we went to work day after day; because if we didn’t, who would?
2020: It’s amazing how a number can strike fear into the heart of so many. 2020 is the year the world, as we knew it, changed. There is the pre-pandemic world and the post. Four years ago this month Covid-19 began its ravaging in earnest and changed how the world does healthcare, education, business, travel, communicating, politics, relationships; and it changed mankind in general. So many were lost. So much was changed.
I am a nurse. I was working in a hospital in 2020. We went to work every day not knowing exactly how shitty it would be but we knew it would be hard. Working in the trenches scarred and scared healthcare workers. It changed the face of patient care forever.
This Netflix show showed and reminded me of so many of the things that were so foreign to us that became second nature- using a mask for four shifts in a row, getting our temperature taken before entering work, putting masks in brown paper bags, PPE shortages, face shields, yellow gowns and isolation carts lining the halls, changing policies weekly/daily as the virus progressed, exposures, people dying alone, no visitors, staff getting sick, no surgeries, no beds, too many surgeries, no beds, no staff, so many patients, no staff, healthcare heroes (a scene with people clapping outside the hospital for the staff made me bawl like a baby- I remember that. It’s haunting….). The over-reaction, the lack of reaction, the politicizing medicine, polarizing common sense, fear, hate. It was all over-whelming. Every single part of it.
The machine that healthcare was becoming fully revealed itself and has been all business all the time since then. The heart of healthcare died in 2020. Many who survived to continue caring for patients try to revive it and give it new life but it isn’t responding. It is flat-lined. So many nurses left healthcare during Covid, and never came back. “Baby” nurses who were in school or who started their careers in 2020 are very different than any other nurses, and not necessarily in a good way.
The loss of so much calls for grief, but we weren’t afforded the recognition or the time for it. We had to keep on keeping on. I remember feeling a strange eery feeling the entire time. I remember feeling so isolated while walking outside six feet from my child. Not visiting grand-kids. I remember feeling isolated behind my mask and full garb at work where it was so busy and full of sick people and yet we were all on our own island of survival. Not to mention watching the actual loss of life over and over and over again. It was traumatic. Mine, and so many other healthcare workers’ reactions are post-traumatic.
Sometimes it takes something as insignificant as a Netflix show to bring something so pivotal to the surface. As much as I would like to say that I wasn’t affected by working in the hospital during 2020-2022, it wouldn’t be true. The loss of my ideal job is a very real thing. The fear that I worked in shift after shift was a very real thing. The way I devoured every piece of information about Covid that I could read or listen to. The way I refused to let my family worry about the disease. The way I railed against the machine as it turned from patient care to money money money. It was all a loss. Anger and denial have been my go to. I guess it’s time to be sad and to feel the loss.
It’s interesting how stress and loss can make the act of putting memories down not happen the way that they normally do. Some people have huge gaps in memory, black holes, of times in their lives when there was trauma, abuse, fear, etc. 2020 was like that for a lot of people. Grief in general can be like that for some. Any time someone is taking in something stressful their brain will literally stop taking in new information. When trauma stops people in their tracks, grief doesn’t have a chance to start.
If you are a nurse, or any human who lived through 2020, and you were not affected by the massive changes and losses, I am very happy for you; however, if you were affected then you have my sympathy. I am empathetic to your loss. I can in no way put myself in someone else’s shoes and I will never say that I know how you feel, but I will say and acknowledge that we did lose a lot. We were afraid. We are angry. We are sad. On this fourth anniversary of the beginning of the end of healthcare and human decency, as we used to know it, I feel you. Grief is a funny thing, and I don’t mean ha ha.