0410 someday in October 2020

I hunched over the ceramic bowl, staring down at what had earlier been a frozen yogurt with all the toppings I could put on. It’s a treat I told myself even though it meant I had to get out of the car instead of driving straight home from work. I was starving too anyway. A shift in COVID cove meant sneaking sips of water and deciding that lunch wasn’t worth getting undressed out of what we called “PPE”. Our cafeteria was closed anyway and instead of planning a lunch for the next day I just slept. I gobbled it down while I drove home, barely tasting anything. Senses were numb. I got home, took my nighttime meds and an extra pill prescribed “for anxiety”. I had to get to sleep, I was exhausted and I knew what a mess I was facing tomorrow morning. No surprise that I couldn’t fall asleep at all. I was wide awake. I snap chatted Noods figuring she was still awake too. No-one at work was bragging about their new sleep cycles. She answered right away. We had our alerts off so I knew I wasn’t waking her.

“Man, dude, I just can’t sleep and I’m fucking exhausted”

She immediately snapped back with video of her lying in bed with her dogs dead to the world. Our husbands went to bed at more normal hours so they were doing what not.

“Five dead today. Five! when the fuck did we ever just have 5 people just die in a day, after a week of 2 here, 3 here? I feel like a nurse in a fucking funeral home,” she half whispered.

We talked awhile since at work it seems we have to yell over our respirators so most of us don’t have the energy to bother. Everything is hard in there. We don’t want to “waste PPE” so no phlebs to draw our labs, no PT/OT, no dietary taking orders for the skeletal patients still managing to stay off the vent. They couldn’t even hold their breath long enough to swallow and they were our healthiest patients with oxygen levels around 85%. We didn’t have environmental services so no rooms were cleaned until that pt left. One pt had been in there 28 days. His room was never cleaned by anyone but the nurses. It was the nurses wiping EVERYTHING down with virex. We had to figure out the elaborate dial a suds thing that was used to fill up the mop and bucket with the correct cleaner. The hallway/entry point where we placed the morgue cart with dead bodies for pickup was as far as the meal trays would go. We got huge carts full of new linen and switched them out with our biohazard laundry. We cared for patients, monitored them, cleaned their rooms, washed the unit floors, gave meds, told family that their loved one was dying, held iPads up so they could say good bye, charted bc by God a nurse has to chart.

Talking with Noods always made me feel better though. We’d worked together so long we had old long standing jokes that made us laugh that no-one else got.

“I think I’m finally getting tired”, I yawned.

“Me too, I’ll see ya tomorrow, same place right?” she laughed. Where the hell else would we be.

I laid my head down and closed my eyes. Suddenly I was overcome by this incredible rush of not even nausea, it was straight to vomit. I barely held it in as I reached our bathroom and just vomited. I was one who never threw up. I only puked a little when pregnant with one of my kids and I still think that was something I had eaten. This was sudden and explosive and it scared me bc it was happening a lot lately. I tried to brush it off as laying down too soon after eating a lot after eating nothing all day. But I was now starting to wretch in the morning before I even got report on my patients.

Since I was already an award winning hypochondriac I was able to sit there and really work myself up. It wasn’t covid, none of our patients were nauseated or vomiting. I stared into the bowl, feeling fine for a moment and then wretching again. There were my night time pills clear as day. That’s great. But as I analyzed this Pollack wanna be that my body tried to make, I started to panic. There was a lot of red. There were other colors as well, clearly from the candies on my dessert but red could mean I have an upper GI bleed. I could hemorrhage, it could be an ulcer. Esophageal varices that I’ve seen pts die of, suffocating on their own blood. What was wrong with me? The familiar fingers of panic were on my shoulder guiding me down into the deeper recesses of “Everything I Learned in Nursing School That Can Kill You”.

Luckily Mike heard me and came in to check on my. He could see I was pale, not a typical greenish pale but my usual panic attack pale. As gross as I knew it was for him, not having a health care job, he was able to convince me that it was the red from the candy and we’ve seen it before with the kids. I was exhausted and he made me feel calm again. I rinsed my mouth out and gave it another shot at trying to sleep. I had 3 hours before my shift started again.