THE INTENT of this series is to provide women health workers an avenue to articulate their professional and personal thoughts, sentiments, and unique experiences about the pandemic. But most importantly, to reassure that we are one with them in their respective journeys.
Kathy Dejaresco Borja, dialysis nurse, Fresenius Kidney Care Facility, New Jersey, shares:
It’s hard to believe that we are in this one-of-a-kind pandemic.
I work as a dialysis nurse in one of the Fresenius Kidney Care facilities in New Jersey. When COVID-19 started to spread like wildfire in the United States, we were inundated given the fact that our patients are immunocompromised due to kidney failure, plus their other comorbidities. Many of them were infected with the virus because they comprise one of the most vulnerable sectors.
Due to short staff, I was deployed to another dialysis facility to take care of kidney patients with COVID-19. During the first few days, many changes took place but they opened my eyes to hard realizations.
First, knowing that I will work the following day, I could hardly sleep the night prior due to anxiety and fear. However, this taught me to pray more and even harder, and learned to trust more in God’s Words, giving me comfort and protection every single day.
Second, with the many guidelines to follow which at first I thought was an overkill, I learned to be compliant and more obedient.
Third, after days of working, I always looked forward to being off from work and be out for a walk, dine out, and relax. Unfortunately, the lockdown made me stay home and again, it taught me patience.
As the days went by, I slowly started to accept that this is the “new normal”. I just wish that all that is happening is just a dream and I will wake up one day getting ready for work the way it used to be. But no… COVID-19 is real!
But more than that, God’s presence in my life is now more real. I just live one day at a time longing for HIS daily sufficient grace.
God bless the whole world!
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Hazel Pondoc, Theatre Nurse Perioperative Practitioner, Mid and South Essex, UK, narrates:
The first surge of the virus in UK was overwhelming, nerve-wracking, and heart-breaking as we mourned the loss of friends in the frontline and empathized with colleagues on self-isolation and ventilated in ICU.
COVID-19 is real! It is reversible indeed! Some will walk out the hospital recovered while some sadly expire.
As a theatre nurse perioperative practitioner working alongside an anesthetist all the time, we plan/brief ahead of time on hot/COVID-19 cases and even cold cases with the rest of the multidisciplinary team. We strictly practice the principle of universal precautions in the workplace.
However, we are still susceptible to infection. We still feel anxiety even after work. We experience insomnia attacks and fear. We experience mixed emotions. Paranoia is the new norm, I would say.
Aside from dealing with precautions to infection control practice, we are also dealing with complications that sometimes arise intraoperatively like hemorrhage, injuries, reactions to anesthesia, etc. It is very stressful, to cut the story short.
As of today, we are on the 7th week of national lockdown and we still have a good number of patients ventilated in ICU. However, the good news is the number decreases slowly every day.
The National Health Service (NHS) guidelines still change every now and then and it’s our responsibility to keep updated and be compliant thereof to the best of our abilities.
NHS has set up a new Nightingale Hospital in London in just 10 days with state-of-the-art equipment but still there’s no treatment or vaccine just yet. Everything is still on trial, thus, staying safe at home is the only thing we can do to prevent the second wave of outbreak.
Most importantly, firmly believe that this will pass, and that the universe is in the hands of God. He is a God of love and not of punishment.
My 3As to share: Ampo; Amping; Armas.
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts. – Florence Nightingale
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For comments, you may reach the writer at belca.87@gmail.com/PN
