Hindsight is 2020
B and M, Retired Nurse and Retired Engineer, Decatur, TN
M: 2020 was kind of another event in a sequence of a events over the last several years. In 2016, I lost both my parents, in 2017 both of our houses burnt up in a wildfire so from 2017 to 2019 we were rebuilding and we moved back in in June 2019. 2020 started off pretty good and it was exciting to be back in the house: in the two years we were building, we lived in 5 different places including on our boat and we were really fortunate we had the boat with everything on there we needed. 2020 was a time when you got separated from your friends and your family—I still haven’t seen my daughter, since COVID. She’s in healthcare and she actually contracted COVID at work and she’s afraid of flying because people aren’t vaccinated.
One of my memories of 2020 is our neighborhood got repopulated during 2020: 50% of the people moved away and 50% returned and the homes where people didn’t return now have new families. The people that returned to the neighborhood, after the fires, we have much stronger connections with those folks and one of the ways that we tried to stay connected was doing social distanced Flintwood Fridays. Flintwood was the name of the street that we lived on so we’d do that outside and put cones out on the street and sit in a wide circle and no one could drive through. That was on of our main ways we socialized and on zoom too. I needed something to fill up your time also and it had to be something you could do by yourself so I started building a boat! As if I needed another boat. So I found plans for an 11 foot dinghy: a Gharvey style and got it about ¾ assembled when we decided to buy a boat to do the Loop so I had to start working on this. But I like to stay productive and useful. B and I went on walks together and such. That was one thing I really missed was going to the gym. You had to completely redo your tactics about how you keep yourself fit and exercise. We converted one of our bedrooms to a gym!
B: During 2020 I was still working as a nurse. I was working in critical care development ward and it was just horrible. I feel like it broke me as a nurse: it broke my compassion----I didn’t outwardly show that I lost my compassion: I showed that I cared but inwardly I stopped caring. I would think every day—I hope I don’t have to go to the COVID side today because we had 3 different units and you’d just dread that it was your turn to go. It would be a nightmare—you’d have to put this whole space-suit on and the people can’t have their family members there so you’re using your cell phone and you’re in the room and you can see this wonderful family on the one side and they’re crying and their family member is on a ventilator and they’re completely unconscious and it was just miserable to see these poor family members suffer and watch their family member die and they’d all come in, they’d be short of breath, next day they’d be on the ventilator, they’d be on the ventilator for 2 weeks and then they’d die. And it was just over and over and over. And then we got more short staffed to where we’d have to take care of them at once. You felt guilty that you didn’t want to go into the room and then you felt guilty that you were limited on your time in the room whereas normally we would spend so much time with our patients and interact with the family too. You’d be in there and you’d have this space-suit on and all of a sudden the lights would go out so that meant that your air was gone so you’d have to get out as fast as you could so it was scary at the same time. I got to the point where I could retire but I felt guilty leaving my co-workers too so it was just horrible. And to watch my co-workers and how stressed they were and how they were taking time off because they just couldn’t do it anymore and the fear of bringing it home to your family. I have two 90 year old parents and so we couldn’t visit them. My mom has dementia so she couldn’t understand why we couldn’t visit and I felt like it was a terrible terrible year.
M: We didn’t know how we were going to live together initially because you were taking COVID patients and I am in a high-risk category
B: And then politically I just hated Trump so much and how poisonous he was and to have that on top of everything. And then to see people not wanting the vaccine. I feel like I’m almost shell-shocked from it. COVID just did me in. I always so proud to be a nurse but by the end I was totally done.
M: One thing you’ve always talked about is the social-work element of nursing--
B: Oh yeah, you don’t have just that one patient, you have the whole family.
M: And with the restrictions set in place where families weren’t able to come in, you weren’t able to use the normal set of tool-set.
B: I felt burn-out for the first time ever and I was a critical care nurse for almost 40 years and you see that a lot with other nurses and it’s easy to put a wall up but for me that would be a hard thing to do because I would bond with my patients, no matter how crazy. I would love to get a homeless guy in there and do a whole make-over for them—buy them clothes at Goodwill and pump them up—believe in them but boy, with COVID it was just the same story over and over again.