That AB Nurse

You know, I thought I would be angry, or at least annoyed with the unvaxxed in ICU. But I’m not. Because as I walk around, seeing patient after patient on their bellies, fielding calls from worried family, analyzing ever worsening bloodwork, reading patients histories…

I’m not angry. Because it’s so damn sad. These people are parents, they’re loved ones, they lived perfectly functional normal lives before this. And they just got fed enough of that shitty misinformation to make them doubt the vaccine, or at least hesitate…

And here we are. Many of them will never make it home. Even if they do, they will face months and months of physical therapy to regain the function they lost due to ICU acquired weakness

Also consider the mental trauma of being intubated, and then not knowing what happened while you were sedated, for some people that means multiple weeks or longer (FYI, you still pooped)

And all of this because what? Because one day they sat down and watched some stupid conspiracy theory video? Or because they saw a hyped up Facebook post about a rare vaccine related injury? And after they interacted with that post, the algorithm slammed them with 10 more?

That little bit of vaccine hesitancy they started with all of a sudden becomes full blown fear. But what truly should be the fear is what I’m watching from my desk outside their room.

ICU is not pretty. This is not grey’s anatomy. They are not sitting serenely, propped on a cloud of white pillows. Even if you are beating Covid at this point, your healthcare team is in a full blown battle to try and prevent any other very common ICU complication from happening

This means bedsores, muscle atrophy, bacterial infections on top of the viral one, maintaining nutrition by tube feeding you. They are turning you in bed every 2 hours, 24 hours a day. Cleaning your bowel movements. Deep suctioning your lungs. Constantly monitoring blood samples