Nurse's 'How It Started, How It's Going' Is A Sobering Reminder Of Where We Are
It’s unimaginable to think what she and other healthcare workers see on a daily basis
If you’ve seen the “How it started, How it’s going” pictures floating around social media, you know some of them can be pretty funny given all we’ve dealt with in 2020. While many give us the much-needed levity we’re looking for, one Nashville area nurse chose to share hers as a reminder to everyone what our healthcare workers are dealing with on a daily basis.
Kathryn took to Twitter over the weekend to share the before-and-after picture of how she started the year and now, after seeing hundreds of patients sick and dying from COVID-19. Though she says, “caring for the sickest of the sick is an honor,” she also wants to send a very clear message to those still not taking this pandemic seriously.
Kathryn tells Scary Mommy if people could remember one thing, this would be it: “Healthcare workers aren’t the frontline, we’re the last line.” She also said how critical it is for all of us to be doing our part to keep ourselves and are loved ones out of the hospitals right now. “There isn’t any cavalry coming to relieve us or take our place if we fall, and things are only going to get worse,” she says. “We will do everything we can for as long as we can to help as many as we can, but the public has to do their part to limit the spread of covid or the healthcare system and the people who work in healthcare will collapse under the weight of it.”
In a series of tweets, Kathryn also says how much she loves being a nurse but that watching people die who did not need to get sick is something that is hard to do day after day. “I love being a nurse. Didn’t exactly expect to be a new nurse in the middle of a highly politicized pandemic but life comes at you fast and even in a pandemic, there’s nothing else I want to do.”
https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1330846060290433029
She continued: “It is devastating to watch people die when those deaths were avoidable and it’s even more devastating when you watch them die the same way, time after time after time. It’s devastating that basic common sense and decency has been politicized.”
These are people who we used to clap for every single night when they got off their shifts and now can’t even be bothered to wear a mask for or stay home for the holidays because it’s too much of an inconvenience.
What’s more, our healthcare system has become overrun in many cities across the US as new coronavirus cases top 200,000 a day and more than 1500 die from it every single day.
“Covid is a brutal disease and I wouldn’t wish the worst of it on my worst enemy,” Kathryn concluded. “Please understand that you aren’t just protecting yourself, you are protecting the people around you.”
Information about COVID-19 is rapidly changing, and Scary Mommy is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. With news being updated so frequently, some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For this reason, we are encouraging readers to use online resources from local public health departments, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization to remain as informed as possible.
