Healthcare Heroes

Happy September everyone! The Labor Day holiday has come and gone and we have a few more weeks until Halloween. Although if you ask my daughter Kimberly, it’s officially Fall Free-for All!

Things have begun to settle down, for a second time this Pandemic. So I have some free time to sit, reflect and share my thoughts. It has been 1 year and 6 months since my last blog post and I will admit, it seems like much, much longer. When I looked back on my last blog post, it was surprised to read that I was talking about the closing of businesses as the quarantine ramped up.

Now here we are, dealing with the new strain of COVID and how to maneuver our lives with it running though the population. The initial strains of the COVID virus wrecked havoc on the world, and just when it seemed we were going to be ok, the Delta variant sprung to life. Now here we are again, fighting over the right to wear or not wear a mask and whether or not to get a vaccine that may help save us and our family members.

At the beginning of the Pandemic, doctors, nurses, medical staff, fire and police were all regarded as healthcare heroes. Everywhere you looked, everything you read and heard, people were thanking those people that were working long hours in dangerous conditions for helping others in regards to the COVID -19 pandemic. Eventually, we saw more and more people arguing, conspiracy theories and using political affiliation to deride those that didn’t feel or act the same way. If you were Republican and contracted COVID, it was because you wanted your political freedoms. If you were Democratic and contracted COVID, it was because it was ‘do as I say, not as I do’. Masks were another bone of contention. ‘My body, my choice’ became a war cry for those that did not want to wear a mask. And if you didn’t want to wear a mask, you were being ‘unpatriotic’ because our lawmakers have asked and in some cases mandated mask wearing.

Once we had a COVID vaccine developed, the two sides of the aisle drifted father and farther apart. If you got the vaccine you were labeled a ‘sheep’, just following along with the crowd. If you didn’t get the vaccine, your were labeled ‘selfish’, not caring what happened to your friends and family. Many people have lost friends and family over this issue; not because of death or injury, but people were cutting off friendships over the views on masks and vaccines. With people becoming more and more angry at all things COVID, those on the front line slowly stopped being HEROES. I can speak of my own personal experiences and how many times I am yelled at or rebuked for the amount of time a person has been waiting to be seen in my Urgent Care. There have been racial comments from otherwise normal seeming persons. And through all this, I have to keep my sanity and pretend that I am ok.

I have gone without meals, spent my lunch at my desk seeing the sick and injured. My husband has spent many an hour worried about my safety, not so much my physical safety but my medical safety. He has lost sleep and spent a lot of time fretting over if I too will get sick despite my vaccine or mask wearing.

So for all those that do not work in healthcare, please be kind to those of us that do. We are tired from long hours and mentally exhausted from the constant anguish of continued illness and death. Many of us are leaving the medical profession because we can no longer continue at this pace, especially in the face of so much animosity. If we all leave, there will be no one else to care for you; in the offices, in the hospital, in the very moment you need us most.

Until the time that I can retire, I will do my best to help those that need me. Be safe everyone and most of all be kind and considerate!