I’ve never really thought of myself as being on the frontline during the pandemic.
I haven’t been exposed to COVID-19, or cared for anyone with it.
Sure, the PPE requirements have been a nuisance working in aged care facilities, and wearing a mask all day feels like hard work. But it’s nothing compared to what I imagine my colleagues interstate and overseas have endured working in hospital COVID wards and care homes where there are outbreaks.
I’ve worked alongside nurses who are run ragged caring for the elderly, watching them patiently explaining to angry relatives the reasons for visiting restrictions, while at home in their own countries their family and friends have been dying of COVID. I have listed to their grief as they tell me about not being able to say goodbye to mothers, fathers, siblings and cousins.
I have used telehealth to connect families overseas and interstate with their dying loved ones, giving them that last chance to say goodbye, because travel restrictions mean they cannot come to sit at the bedside and hold the hand of those they love. I’ve lost count of the letters I have written to Chief Health Officers on behalf of these people to support their applications to travel to attend a funeral.
I’m tired. Everyone at work is tired. Not just because we work long hours, or because we are understaffed while the workload increases, but because the permanent state of vigilance is exhausting. Every radio station, television channel, newspaper and social media forum is filled with COVID news – we can’t escape it. We have not been able to have holidays – those precious days and weeks each year in which we can take ourselves off to explore other places, turn our faces to the sun, unwind and relax to recharge our body, mind and spirit.
Caring for the dying is difficult at the best of times, but during a pandemic there are layers upon layers of complexity that we peel back one at a time, only to reveal more layers underneath. We bear witness to grief, we hold space for others, it is accumulative and eventually catches up with us.
I have cried more in the last six months than in all my years of nursing. Advertisements on tv can bring me to tears, they randomly run down my cheeks when I’m listening to a song, watching a movie, or reading a book. The sadness comes out of the blue, overwhelms me, then disappears. I’m not burnt out – I still want to go to work, I love my job. But I’m tired – ‘bone tired’, as my grandmother used to say.
Just today, I read an article about the grief that nurses are experiencing during the pandemic, and the potential impact of this on the nursing workforce in the years to come. I know many who have left their jobs, moved to different areas, or decided it’s finally time to retire. It’s difficult to imagine the pandemic coming to an end, and that we will ever return to what we once knew as ‘normal’ life and work.
To my nursing, medical and allied healthcare colleagues on the front line in COVID hotspots, hang in there. Take a mental health day, or two. Stay safe.