What is a Hero, Anyway?

Being directly involved in this pandemic while also being simultaneously affected by it have given me a lot of time to think about my career as a nurse, what it means to me, and what value it brings to others. The community support for us as healthcare workers has been so profound. Local businesses are bringing us food, family members are making signs and posting them up around town, the evening display of clapping, howling, and flashing of lights to commemorate the end of another hard day has shone a light on the value that we as healthcare workers bring to our community.

 One thing I know for sure, is that none of us are getting out of this without some form of trauma. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not. I hope that we can all somehow learn to use our shared traumas to be better humans overall, to support each other even when times are good, to see each person as a person of value, and not just a stranger on the street. My heart aches for those who have lost someone to this virus, as the typical rituals of sickness and dying have gone out the window in the interest of keeping the population at large as safe as possible. I think about all the people going home to empty houses, their spouses, friends, or family having been so rapidly and unexpectedly lost to this illness. Being a person who is sensitive to providing comfort during the dying process, this has been particularly difficult for me to provide patients and their families with "good deaths." I touched on that a little bit in my last blog, but I wanted to share a little bit about what this looks like on the inside for both nurses and patients, and why it's so important that we follow the recommendations to stay home, to stay healthy, and to support and encourage the same from those around us.

Recently I had the pleasure of caring for a very sweet man with coronavirus. He was getting better and in the morning would be going home to self-isolate and recover. The patient's spouse was also in the hospital with complications from the virus, and wasn't expected to make it through the night. After I received the call, I squatted down next to my patient's bed so that I could be to eye-to-eye with him; me in my full protective garb which includes gloves, a yellow gown, a mask, and eye goggles, and I told him that his wife had passed away. I remained there with him and held his hand while he cried. He blamed himself for what had happened because he had tested positive for coronavirus and believed that he had given it to her. I listened quietly, letting him talk, letting him cry, knowing that he needed me to just listen, to just be there with him; I was the only one there, the only one allowed to be with him. After a while I arranged for him to go see her, and I brought him to his wife's room down the hall so he could see her one last time. I left him there with her to say all the things he needed to say, to feel all the things he needed to feel in that moment; the two of them alone in that room, the last time they would be together.

She died alone. He mourned alone, with no one but me wearing the equivalent of a space suit to comfort him. In normal times, he would have been able to stay in his wife's room with her until she took her last breath, surrounded by those who cared about her the most, but with the virus visitation is extremely limited and outright prohibited most of the time due to the risk of exposure. I hate the ways that this virus has taken away our closeness towards each other. I couldn't even give him a hug because the risk of me being exposed is so high, even in my garb. We're told that if we follow the guidelines of wearing our protective equipment, our chances of contracting the virus at work are very low, but we still need to maintain our distance and keep our interactions at a minimum, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room to provide person-to-person comfort. And let's be honest, does anyone really want a hug from a person wearing head-to-toe protective gear? I feel like there is nothing less human than trying to hug a person whose very outfit screams "you're infected!" In all the ways that nurses have been described as heroes during this, I feel that providing emotional support and comfort through physical closeness is one of the super-powers that have been severely limited if not taken completely away from us. 

What is a hero anyway? I'm struggling a little bit with being called a hero. I feel like being a hero implies some sort of special ability or skill set that allows for a courageous self-sacrifice without judgement or bias, which I guess could be argued, but I'm doing what I do because professionally it's what I've always done. I don't say that with hubris nor do I mean for it to sound flippant, but the fact of the matter is, I've been a nurse for 18 years of my life, and at this point in my career being a nurse has become a large part of who I am and what I do. However, if I were to be completely honest, if there was a way for me to feasibly sit this one out, I would. I'm terrified of this virus; I'm terrified of what it can do to myself and those I care about. The other day at work my goggles fell off when I was providing patient care and I about lost my shit, worrying that I had been exposed. It's a romantic notion that nurses and doctors selflessly do what they do for the good of the human race. The reality is that even with the best of intentions, we're being paid to do what we do for the good of the human race. Do I care about people? Very much so. Do I want to help people be as healthy as they can be? Yes, I do. Does taking care of others fulfill me? Yes, it does. Would I do this for free? No, I wouldn't, not at this level of personal risk. That is the harsh reality of my chosen profession as a nurse. Does that make me less of a hero? Perhaps. Mr. Rogers famously said, "Look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping." I very much enjoy being a helper in the hospital setting, and I personally feel that identifying as a helper is more suited to how I view myself as a nurse. Being a helper in someone's wellness journey is a very fulfilling part of my profession, but it doesn't come without personal physical, emotional, and mental risks.

To be honest, caring for patients with coronavirus has been unexpectedly restorative for me in so many ways. It's been weeks since I've been yelled at by a patient's family member. It's been weeks since a patient has disrespected, verbally, or physically abused me. Patients no longer demand things from me, they ask, and for the most part they listen without argument. They overwhelmingly are kind, they're grateful, they're listening to our recommendations and they're following them. I've never seen so many patients using their incentive spirometers, which, prior to coronavirus, either went straight into the trash or were just paper weights on their tray tables. For the first time in a long time, I think the patients are staring down the barrel of their own mortality and they are terrified. They've seen their family and friends die from this. Coronavirus has frightened them in a way high blood pressure never could, and never will. No longer am I seen as the pain in the ass waking them up in the night to take their blood pressure. No longer am I viewed as the one giving them shots just for funsies. I think for one of the very first times in my career as a nurse, I am now valued as one of the people who is directly involved with saving their lives, and all the miserable things that go along with being a patient have now become the very things that will keep them alive through this. It's always been that way for me, but it hasn't always been that way for them. It's been a very drastic change, and it's a change that I hope sticks around once things are back to "normal," whatever that will look like when this is all said and done.

In the meantime, the hospital units are quiet, there's very little coming and going, there's no laughter spilling out into the hallway from rooms full of friends and family. Prior to all this, when I heard laughter on the nursing unit, I would always go into the patient's rooms and tell them how wonderful it is to hear laughing in the hospital. It's something we don't hear nearly enough, and lately not at all. I think during all this, it feels insensitive or disrespectful to laugh in the presence of the sick, even though shared laughter can be so comforting. Laughter implies that things are okay, that we're relaxed, that we're able to not take things so seriously, that we will get through this and that it's okay to have a little fun along the way. Laughter means that we're able to find delight in the most minimal of things, human oddities, funny sayings, a wayward fart. I know that someday we'll laugh together again.

Take care, be well. Thank you for all things you are doing for yourself and others during this time of uncertainty.