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As we go about our day to day lives, moaning that we can’t buy dops on a Friday afternoon and have to be home by 10PM, it’s easy to forget about those who are still battling the ugliest side of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Inside Groote Schuur Hospital, doctors and healthcare workers are faced with trauma each and every day and have been for the best part of 18 months.
It’s the same story at hospitals across the country, and the globe.
Dr Estie Meyer, an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) surgeon at Groote Schuur, has recounted the trauma and strain that they’re under in an article on The Daily Maverick.
While some people see fit to protest against vaccines outside the hospital’s walls, inside it’s day after day of harrowing experiences.
Some of what Meyer had to say:
In January 2021 I found myself in the high care unit — this unit provides the highest care before you get intubated in ICU. The patients there are sick, often too tired to talk. These patients do one of three things — die, go to ICU, or the moment they are better they are moved to another ward. There is a high turnover of patients, monitors beeping non-stop and at least five new folders a day waiting on the desk… put there for death certificates…
I cried every day during my time in this unit and for several months after this. I would just spontaneously start crying, sometimes even in mundane places, like the grocery aisle…
Things got better after the second wave subsided, but it wasn’t too long before the third wave arrived.
In order to give some respite to physicians who were overworked and under extreme strain, Meyer volunteered to return to a COVID-19 ward.
32 beds, and non-stop heartbreak:
The moment the ward opened I walked in to find a patient dying. For two months I had at least 1-2 deaths per day. I started dreading opening the doors to the ward… wondering which beds would be empty. There were moments it felt like all I did was move between beds to declare patients dead. The patients were not fat and old anymore. They were young and fit. My age… and the peak was not passing.
It just got longer and longer. Never in my life had I seen so many dead people in such a short time. Though it is not the deaths that nearly broke me… It was balancing the emotions of the patients and their families that sucked out a piece of my soul every single time.
People are out here moaning about having to wear a mask for half an hour while they go shopping.
People are saying the virus is a ‘hoax’.
How many more doctors need to write open letters, or speak up about the horrors they experience daily, before they listen?
Meyer said she eventually turned to a support group at work to cope, where everybody had similar stories to share.
To finish, she has a few lessons to share:
Let’s be kind to one another. That is what got me through this time. Small gestures like a biscuit from the medical consultant when I had my coffee, a doctor that is not even a close friend giving me a massage voucher as she saw what a bad state I was in, and a hug by a nurse when I had to do my third phone call of the day.
I saw how one nurse helped another with a home school project as both of their kids were still only going to school every second day. A beautician listening to me for two hours after I just sobbed in her room when she asked how my day was.
So be kind. As that is the only way broken medical personnel can come to work the next day… and the next wave.
There will be another wave, as we are nowhere near any form of vaccine herd immunity.
These doctors, and nurses, and healthcare workers will have to go through this all again.
The trauma, the pain, the phone calls to families to tell them their loved one has passed away.
Meyer says she is not a hero, but she is, and all of those who work tirelessly to try and save lives are.
There’s a reason they’re encouraging South Africans to get vaccinated:
The information in this graphic has been verified by @WestCapeHealth. A picture is worth 1000 words but more importantly might prevent 1000 deaths. pic.twitter.com/Sg5DGOCcY5
— Tom Eaton (@TomEatonSA) September 7, 2021
No, it’s not a fake news graphic, as confirmed by hospital spokesperson Alaric Jacobs.
If you don’t want to take the vaccine, that remains your choice.
Just don’t be one of those awful humans who dismisses the struggles faced by healthcare workers at this most trying of times, because you may well end up needing their help.
[source:dailymaverick]
