2020

“Grief is just all the love you have with nowhere to go.”

We’ve had enough death in our country. Please, for those risking their lives to save us, please wear a mask:

From yesterday’s NY Times:
I reached out to Ashley Bartholomew, a registered nurse who recently resigned from her job in a Covid ward at an El Paso hospital, but stayed on for another two weeks because of the desperate need. She said identifying a single breaking point was difficult, but told me about an exchange with a patient who was improving.

She went into his room in full P.P.E. as he was watching the national news cover El Paso’s need for more mobile morgues.

“He said the news is making it a bigger deal than it really is,” she recalled. She tried to remain professional, but couldn’t hold back her tears. “I said: ‘You know, I’ll be brutally honest. This is my last shift and I’ve never seen so much death, so much sickness, in the last two weeks than I have my entire 10 years of being in health care.’”

Taken aback, the patient said he thought everyone in the ward was doing as well as he was. Of the 25 rooms she had been in that day, she told him, he was the only patient able to chat. Everyone else was too sick.

“This is a pandemic within a pandemic,” she said. “A pandemic of misinformation along with the Covid-19 pandemic. And health care workers, we can’t fight both at the same time.”

If not for you and those you love, do it for the nurses and doctors: Please, wear a mask.