A Nurse New to the ICU in the USA... During a Pandemic.

Last year, I returned to nursing and I I still hated it. So, after seven weeks, I left again and set my sites on running away to Southeast Asia to teach English. Now, thanks to the pandemic, I'm a nurse again and I feel I've found my niche in the ICU

Maybe it's the pandemic creating a greater sense of meaning, a feeling that I'm actually helping, maybe it's the hospital and the staff in this ICU, or maybe it's the lack of options during "these trying times" in "the new normal", but regardless of reason, my first three weeks back feels exciting and fulfilling rather than stressful and draining.

For the most part, in my previous gigs I've felt overwhelmed, under utilized, over-tasked, and like an over worked administrative clerk who can get sued or accidentally kill someone. In each job I continually felt like I chose the wrong grail at the end of the third (and best) Indiana Jones movie.

Now, in my first seven shifts on the unit I feel useful, and honestly, a bit excited. It's exciting to be there in the thick of things when it matters, when we're running out of beds and talking about going into "disaster mode soon.

I'm working in a hospital in a smaller city in the Great Lakes area of the U.S. It's not a top ranked hospital, just a local hospital in the city. Our cases our not the most acute, those go to a bigger sister hospital on the other side of town. On my first day 16 of 21 patients were covid. Nine of the beds are critical care (1 or 2 patients to a nurse) and 12 are intermediate (3 patients to a nurse). Five of the nine critical beds were Covid. My last shift it was seven. I've had seven different Covid patients, I know that two died, one had been there forty days (tubed, extubated, tubed again, put on a rotoprone, and now off and intubated and an outside chance of recovery). Except for one, who was able to get shipped to an LTAC on Hi Flow, they've all steadily declined. The youngest (the forty day one) is fifty-three, the others were in their sixties and seventies.

I've also seen that the treatments like Remdesivir, Decadron, and Plasma are merely things they throw at the critically ill later in the game in the hopes it will help- it usually doesn't. Actually, Decadron is given a bit earlier, but either way, us healthcare workers are basically doing what we can with oxygen support while we either watch you slowly die or slowly recover.

I look forward to getting vaccinated. It's scary when I think about how much I go into aerosolized rooms, so I try not to think about it.

That's all for my first post. Stay home, wear a mask.