Guest Column: Too Many COVID-19 Patients Died Alone. I Wrestled With How To Help Them.

Arlington TX

15 April, 2022

7:59 PM

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By Anna Martin, Fort Worth Report April 14, 2022 The two years I worked as a nurse in the COVID ICU were a time of despair, depression and dissociation. In my memories, I watch myself, disembodied, moving from room to room, accompanied by a cacophonous soundtrack of cardiac and oxygen monitor alarms. I worked the night shift, so patients' rooms were glowing glass boxes, dark but eerily lit by machines and monitor displays. Most of the patients were "proned and paralyzed," which is to say that they were face down in the mattress, in a medically induced coma, on a ventilator, and paralyzed to keep their lungs in sync with the breathing machine. Working with faceless corpses in the dark only exacerbated the dissociation I experienced. I say "corpses" because, in the early days of alpha and delta, the survivability rate was about 5%, despite our heroic efforts, our best treatments, our tears and hopes. I could count on two hands how many patients we managed to save during that first year. The others, roughly 300, left in body bags. The only thing worse than the patients who died on ventilators were those not yet on them. Alone, in an isolation room, denied visitors, tethered into bed by our monitoring equipment, too weak to stand anyways, gasping like a fish out of water, struggling for every breath, anxiety seeping out of every pore. Many of them were in their 20s, 30s, 40s, facing deaths that they were still too young to accept. Anger, denial, disbelief, mistrust. More than anything, they were intensely alone and afraid. I am haunted by the cries they choked out: "Please don't leave me." But I had to leave. I had to leave all of them. Because they were many, and I was one of the few. Once the lack of oxygen had done its damage, patients' fear and anxiety morphed into confusion. No longer coherent, no longer begging, they blindly pawed the oxygen mask off their face and fell out of bed if they weren't securely tied in. The deaths I saw during the early days of COVID-19 were deaths I wouldn't wish on anyone. They were lonely deaths. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.