Dear Director, I am a “relatively” young, Nursing Coordinator. A few days ago I returned to manage the Covid semi-intensive therapy of the Pneumology of Trieste. A dramatic situation, in some ways worse than the previous waves (by now we have lost count).
Breathless
Yesterday I dedicated part of my day to a patient, one of many, who was not vaccinated (not by choice but for health reasons); he was dyspnoic (he couldn’t breathe, ed), he could not detach himself from the support of the fan even to take a sip of water to moisten his mouth, dried up due to oxygen at high flows. This person, who asked for help yesterday, my / our help, who tried to communicate as best he could to tell us what he needed, is gone today.
Coronavirus Italy, today’s November 14 bulletin: 7,569 new positives, 36 deaths. Sileri: “It will be a free Christmas”
Two years of ordeal
Similar stories and experiences have become part of our daily life for almost two years now. Stories of fathers, mothers, grandparents, children with whom we must shake hands in their last days of life; people who, in the worst moment that any human being can go through, are separated from their affections and cling only to our eyes, behind a suit, covered by masks and visors. And these people arrive at this point because of a pathology that today, in most cases, can be avoided or at least controlled.
A warning for deniers
I would like people to see, I would like all No Vax, No Greens to spend a day, or even half, in the “13th circle of hell”; I wish they would realize how inhumane it is to die of Covid pneumonia, despite our efforts to make the last mile of these people as mild as possible. As mentioned, a way to try to avoid all this exists, and to persist in not using it is by villains.
We are exhausted but we heal everyone
All of us health workers, driven by an ethics unknown – or at least ignored – by the people of the square, will continue to care for and assist everyone, whatever their ideology (Pro Vax, No Vax, …), despite the ever increasing anger against those who daily insult the right to collective health. But we are really exhausted. And unlike those who pride themselves on never giving up, we we can not never give up. We have families to take care of, wives, husbands, children to return to and who deserve our attention; attentions that cannot be more and more due to the tiredness that overwhelms us.
Freedom cannot rhyme with death
I am an ardent advocate of individual freedoms; but this freedom must exist from the moment we come into the world to the moment we die; and whoever dies attached to the fan, you believe, is anything but free and at peace.
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