20/04/2020
I S T A Y S T R O N G F O R Y O U, Y O U S T A Y H O M E F O R M E!
Over the last few week I’ve see the “I stay here for you, you stay home for me” placards held up by my nhs colleagues all over social media but we aren’t just staying at work for you, we are staying strong for you!
Over the last few weeks the mental and physical toil on me and my nhs colleagues has been exhausting. There are doctors, nurses and other frontliners breaking down in tears all over social media because what we are experiencing is soul destroying.
Now I know my work isn’t half as bad as what my hospital colleagues are having to deal with where death is a daily occurrence at the moment but the other day I had to write the most amount of sympathy cards in one day than I have ever written. One was for an otherwise healthy 53 year and it just drew me to a halt. It was like the wind had been knocked out of me as I thought about the family this man, my patient, leaves behind. This is the soul destroying part, not to mention the endless hours, the complete change in the way we work in general practice, the endless learning of new systems to support our patients, the endless documents we are reading on a daily basis as guidance is changing that quickly, the never ending phone calls we are making to check our most vulnerable patients are ok, the phone calls from relatives who worry there family member won’t get the treatment they need when the time comes. Then there is the dealing with the anxiety of your loved ones, my mum is in a constant state of panic that I go out to work, working in a hot hub dealing with covid19 +ve patients and that I might contract it and “die like the nurse in Walsall”. My children ask me on a daily basis as I go to work “mummy will you get the virus if you keep going to work”, the anxiety of do we have the correct PPE, do we have enough, is the guidance correct given that it changes on a near daily basis or is it being changed for economic reasons alone (because we don’t have enough)!
Our strength is to deal with all of this and to keep going, to keep smiling despite this, TO BE STRONG FOR YOU! My colleagues, I
see you, I hear you, I salute you 🙌 @ London, United Kingdom
