I Work in Healthcare During a Pandemic, and it’s Really Impacting My Writing.
When all of this is over, I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.
Since around the beginning of March, when the medical director of the Nursing Home where I work warned the administrators that it was a matter of when, not if the coronavirus reached the facility and my residents, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that the building is a ticking time bomb.
Well yesterday, the bomb went off.
Our first resident was diagnosed with COVID-19, and the results came back on her birthday.
There really is no amount of mental preparation that can get you ready for the moment when the inevitable finally hits. Instantaneously, aside from overwhelming fear the feelings of being dirty, dangerous, expendable, and above all, guilt washed over me with such ferocity I knew my knees would have buckled if I stood when my boss told me the news. The building has been closed to all visitors indefinitely since March 13th, two weeks before the first reported case even came to the county. Every day since even a few days before visitors were banned, all workers have been screened at the door for symptoms. One of us employees, tasked with the responsibility of keeping these residents as safe and healthy as possible, had…
