Aurora hit another sad milestone this week of 10,000 COVID-19 cases and 155 deaths, with 4,000 of those cases in the last month alone.
As the State of Illinois entered Tier 3 Resurgence Mitigations, Aurora mayor Richard C. Irvin used his time at the Aurora City Council meeting this week to issue a plea to the community.
But this time, it wasn’t his own words that were used.
Watch the segment at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dytj3JKoV60 or read below.
Carol Williams, a nurse at Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora, shares her heartbreaking experiences in providing medical care to COVID-19 patients in a letter to Aurora mayor, Richard C. Irvin.
Just stop:
Stop thinking this is just like the flu, it isn’t.
Stop telling me the survival rate so it’s not a big deal, it is a big deal.
Stop saying health-care workers signed up for this, we didn’t.
Stop ignoring science-based recommendations of masking, social-distancing, hand-hygiene, and not gathering in large crowds, they work.
Stop kidding yourself that this isn’t going to affect you or someone you love or know, it will.
Stop thinking that only unhealthy people with preexisting medical conditions, or elderly people are the ones dying, they aren’t the only ones.
Stop being confident that if you get sick from anything, the resources to save you will be readily available, that may not be in this stage of the pandemic.
Stop believing hospitals aren’t being overrun because of the massive influx of COVID patients at this moment, they are.
Stop thinking if they make makeshift areas to house more patients there will be properly trained staff to care for them, there may not be.
Stop believing that all front-line health-care workers are properly protected with PPE, many across the country still are not.
Stop ignoring that health-care workers are getting sick themselves, it’s happening.
Stop believing that doctors are profiting from this pandemic, they aren’t.
Stop politicizing this virus, it’s a public health crisis.
If you are taking this pandemic seriously, doing the best you can to be safe and protect others, thank you.
If you are not, please start now. I am begging you!
Anyone who has asked me how things are going, I have given them my unfiltered COVID ICU nurse experience. No one wants to believe this is happening in their own backyard, but it is and it isn’t pretty.
The inability to save a patient despite doing everything you can is mentally exhausting. Now imagine doing that on repeat for eight months and counting.
Imagine watching a patient suffocating thru a door while scrambling to get your PPE on because they inadvertently removed the mask they desperately need to breathe but you still need to protect yourself first.
Imagine being the nurse crying with your patient when they realize that everything we’re doing to help them, still may not be enough and death is a real possibility.
Imagine being the nurse and doctor telling a patient we need to put them on the ventilator because we have exhausted all other measures. Calling or FaceTiming their family so they can say I love you and encouraging words while in our heads we know for some patients this is the last phone call they will have with each other.
Imagine being the nurse or doctor holding that same patient’s hand and stroking their head weeks later while their ventilator is removed because they haven’t improved and their family then says goodbye and I love you over FaceTime while they take their last breaths.
Now please imagine being the COVID ICU patient. The breathlessness, pain, fear, loneliness, isolation, anxiety, hopelessness, and sadness. The need to use all your energy just to breathe. The true realization you may not get better and facing your own mortality. We do our best to calm fears, comfort, and connect, while providing the best care we can in their most vulnerable moments.
I promise anyone reading this that your healthcare team members will fight for you with every ounce of their being to get you better until every measure has been exhausted whether you are hospitalized with COVID, or any other illness.
Please do not discount all the lives lost or affected by this pandemic any longer. We need to come together as a country, now. We need to work together, now.