Brie Gowen

Savor the Essence of Life

The Scars That Don’t Fade

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Three years ago. Wow. Looking at the black and white photo of my face, I feel… empty. Sometimes emotions are like that. It’s not a void of emotions, but rather an onslaught. Too many to comb through and pick just one.

This week the hospital I’m at put out a policy stating we didn’t have to wear masks anymore. After three years of wearing them constantly! After a shift without one, I felt so strange. Every time I rose from my computer I felt naked. I felt as if I was doing something wrong. I felt afraid, even. Like, shouldn’t I wear it anyway?! I saw other nurses with their masks still on the full, twelve hours. My comrades who remembered.

I cannot explain the emotions to you if you weren’t there, but I’ll try. It’s trauma in its purest form. I told my therapist that it reminded me of the pain I had seeing armless, legless, faceless Marines come into my care as a Navy Corpsman. It wasn’t war three years ago, like it had been in Iraq, but in a way it was. It felt that way. So many of my friends, family, and acquaintances couldn’t wait for masks to be a memory, but for the beside, ICU nurses, they were more than paper. They were more than a mandate. They were life. And that sounds silly saying it out loud, yet we clung to what we hoped would protect us.

In the beginning of the pandemic, we saw far too many people die. At the beginning, it seemed like they all died. My ICU at the time kept track of the deaths, and in nine months I saw 263 slip away. It did not matter what we did to try and make them stay.

263 doesn’t seem like a lot of people if you’re looking at national averages or through a political lens, but to those who wore respirators, goggles, gowns, and gloves, it’s too many. Each patient had a name, they were loved, and they were missed. They weren’t allowed to stay on an earth where people would become angry at a medical community trying to help. If they were, would they have stood up for men and women like me who only wanted the lucky folks outside of the trenches to believe us when we said it was bad?! I think so.

I think the immigrant, with frightened eyes, rapid breathing, and no understanding of the English language would have managed, to translate, “they saved me!” But he can’t, because we didn’t. He was my first, personal death to Covid-19.

So many would follow. The guy who through struggling gasps would tell his wife via phone, “I’ll talk to you soon,” had been the end of me. I had made eye contact with a fellow nurse, through perspiration and plastic shielding, eye contact that agreed sadly on a mental level, “no, sir, you won’t.” And he didn’t. I couldn’t take it as personal anymore after that. I just went on auto. We all did. Doing all the things, that meant nothing to combat that virus, and meant even less to communities who said we were stretching and fabricating the numbers.

It hurts too much to say much more. By the time other strains were rapidly killing middle-aged people like myself, I had completed insulated myself from a world that rolled its eyes at me. Yet, I still tried to help. I can remember trying to convince the man, three years my junior, why he needed to prone to get his oxygen levels up, while he groaned in broken, struggling exhalations that Covid wasn’t real.

I’m glad things are better now (in terms of virology), and we can finally have the option to drop the masks that protected us. But in someways, some things are worse. The pandemic didn’t just kill fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, and friends; it killed the community of togetherness that had helped so much in my previous, frontline battles after 9/11. Where did those people go? The ones who said, together we are better, and we can stand against this. It was replaced by factions. Factions made up of those who three years later are hesitant to drop a mask because of the things they saw, and those who never would wear them anyway, because they didn’t see the things I can’t forget.

The scars on my nose and cheeks faded, but the other wounds, they’re incredibly harder to dull away.

The Offense of Being Offended as a Christian

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Have you ever been forced to be around someone you don’t like? If you’re a responsible adult, in a work setting, then the answer is probably yes. You can break off an abusive, long term relationship, ignore your in-laws, or cut ties with a toxic friend, but leaving a great job because of an annoying coworker isn’t always economically feasible, and I’ve found myself in this situation lately.

Have you ever been so irked by an itchy personality that you imagine yourself throttling that person? I know, not very Christ-like, but let’s be honest; we’ve all been there once or twice. Some people can just be so different from us, and it’s like they know all the wrong buttons to push! This was what happened to me.

This lady was so prideful. I remember Southern ladies describing it as, “she thinks her sh*t don’t stink.” And that seemed like a pretty good description of this situation. The woman I’m referring to thought she was always right, everyone else was always wrong, and her way of doing things was the only way. It doesn’t make for a conducive workspace.

One morning, I had just sat down booting up my computer with another scheduled, early-arriving coworker, when she walked in. She wasn’t supposed to arrive for another hour! I thought I had time to drink my coffee and get my heart and mind in the right place for her abrasive personality, yet there she was.

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked, even as my mind wondered if she was just checking to make sure we came to work on time in an environment without a time clock to keep us honest.

And so it began. She started droning on about the changes she was instituting for the workplace (as the most senior person in our office), and about all the things we were all doing wrong that she could improve upon.

Y’all, it flew all over me. I had spent the past couple of days she’d been off cleaning up her messes and mistakes! My work-plate had been overflowing thanks to her missed steps, and it made my blood want to boil at her audacity to suggest anyone else was the problem!

The thing was, I wasn’t the only one! Everyone in the office felt the same as me. They were fed up with her constant slacking of job duties, but even more so with her attitude that suggested otherwise. Grrr. It made us all crazy. In fact, when she wasn’t around we talked about how insane she made us all feel. We laughed at her expense, and made jokes about her holier-than-though attitude. It somehow made me feel better, you know?

After a full day of hard work, also filled with plenty of gossip about my troublesome coworker, I drove home and started feeling conviction. I knew it wasn’t right. Not any of it. Not my anger, not my judgement. I shouldn’t be making jokes at her expense, ridiculing her behavior with others, or gossiping period. I confessed of my behavior and asked the Lord to change my heart. Man, it is so easy to fall into sin, and fall away from the heart of God! I asked Him to give me His heart towards this problematic coworker, to help me see her with His eyes. That’s a tough sale, guys, cause when you do that, you no longer want to dislike a person for their erroneous behavior; you want to embrace them in their brokenness. Have you ever realized we’re all the same in that we’re not yet whole?

The next time I worked with this person, it was great! I told my husband it had to be the Holy Spirit. I usually grew angry at her pride and easily offended when her comments suggested I was less of a good worker than she. Because really, isn’t that what these situations really come down to most of the time? Personal offense? But on this day, I took no offense, and we got along swimmingly. I left the office lighter, in a better mood, because instead of feeling angry, I felt peace.

Have you ever noticed how off your behavior is when you’re angry? It’s the opposite of the fruits of the spirit. Instead of peace, we feel unease. Instead of joy, we feel rage. Instead of patience, we feel frustration. Instead of kindness, we feel vengeance. And most importantly, instead of love, we feel the opposite! If God is love, what is the opposite of love? Well, I can tell you, it’s not of God.

The thing is, many times when we feel offended, it’s selfishness. Instead of service, like Jesus modeled, we have placed ourselves to be served. By assuming our desires, opinions, or even our life, are more important than a brother/sister, we are elevating ourselves, which never pans out well in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom way, we are asked by Jesus to lay down our lives, to take up His cross, and to put on His yoke. Cause, you see, any other yoke is one of slavery. Slavery to anger, pride, selfish action, and again, the opposite of God’s essence, love. It turns out, His yoke, His way, is easy. That’s why after being a slave to offense, we feel terrible, but after being a slave (servant) to love, we feel amazing. I don’t think we always realize why we’re feeling so bad. We think it’s because of other people’s actions, but I would suggest, perhaps it’s our own hearts causing us harm.

When that person passes you in traffic haphazardly or cuts you in line! Arghh!

Remember justice is His. He will lift you up. Ask yourself these heart questions. What makes our time more valuable than that of another? What ranking does this particular offense hold in light of eternity? Does our response negatively affect our heart, and does it display the light of the One we claim to love? Are we reflecting Jesus to a lost and hurting world? This is something I desire more than anything.

When someone disagrees with something that is very important to us, it’s hard. When someone maliciously hurts us, it’s even harder. It’s crazy hard to lay down the desire to be right, the desire to be vindicated, and the desire to be esteemed, but as a Christian, that is what we are called to. We are asked to humble ourselves, to lay down our swords, and to serve in love. I still find myself in this crazy world, getting offended, but I try to not let that offense rule me, define me, or steer my actions. I’ve found that the true offense to being offended isn’t against the one I perceive as the offender, but rather it ends up being an offense to my own heart and the spirit God has given me. And who wants that!

Nurses, Why Are You Surprised?!

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Nurses, why are you surprised?!

When a community treats its nurses like it treats its fast food workers, this is what happens. I mean, they don’t wanna flip the burgers, but they’ll be first to complain and ridicule the people who won’t. They desire someone else to take the orders with a smile, work the holidays and weekends, yet stay silent about the wage that isn’t appropriate to the task. You won’t catch a senator running the burger joint drive-thru anymore than you’ll spot them cleaning someone’s granny’s butt, yet they will make the decisions about how it should be done, or how it should be compensated. So, why are you surprised?

Healthcare has become a business of customer service, with profits based on satisfaction scores, but the difference in us and say, a department store, is we also are distracted by the tiny hindrance of keeping people alive while we smile, in between the deliveries of turkey sandwiches and warm blankets. No other career will you be expected to cater to the public’s fancy in such a palate-pleasing manner while also being held legally liable for a simple, human mistake that could end in catastrophic harm. In other words, make sure the customer is always right, but also make sure that you are. In healthcare you can lose your job for customer dissatisfaction, but you can also lose your home and livelihood if your math calculations aren’t up to par. Maybe that’s why we’re surprised. Hmmm.

Twenty years I spent at the critical care bedside, giving my everything to my patients. And while I experienced seasons of burnout, I never stopped loving it. I love it still. But I couldn’t do it anymore. In November I took a 50% pay cut (as in my hourly pay was cut in half), for the same amount of fulltime hours, but in an environment that was less stressful than direct patient care. So, what led me there after 20 years?!

I tried to be nice and say it was things like an aging back, and while it’s true that 20 years of turning obese men to clean their bottom has destroyed my spine, that wasn’t the main reason I had to step away. It’s not the main reason we see a shortage in healthcare across the board. Heck, we never minding wiping pee and poop off people who didn’t appreciate us for it. It was the fact that you, the politicians, the administrators, the voting public at large, don’t appreciate what we sacrifice for our communities. Y’all, that hurts.

The past two years were like a knife in my back from a longtime friend. I saw the public as a whole, who had no problem before messaging me late at night for advice about their sick kid, suddenly decide I had no idea what I was talking about. They trusted me to take care of their father after open heart surgery, but they rolled their eyes at my opinions on a pandemic.

We said, “we’re drowning!”

They replied, “the numbers are a lie!”

We begged them to wear a mask, stay home, or even, God forbid, consider a scientifically proven vaccine.

They laughed. They shared memes making fun of the science they had trusted us to treat them with for decades, and they even used our own faith against us. That probably hurt the most. As a woman of faith, personally, who loves Jesus and people, I couldn’t understand how my service to others in love suddenly meant so little. Ok, I’ll admit it; I was surprised.

Those like myself, working in the ICU, under horrible conditions, to work tirelessly and fruitlessly, combating a virus we couldn’t defeat, were forgotten.

I remember reaching out to family and friends afar, expressing the pain of what I was witnessing, and it was met with monotone, false sympathies.

“Oh, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I’m so sorry.”

“Meanwhile, let’s remember what’s really important here. This is all a hoax to take away our freedoms and religion.”

So, while we hurt, they swept our lamentations under a rug, shining the spotlight instead on political platforms.

In the midst of our distress, many frontline workers fell away, and to boost the bodies required to fight a pandemic, they increased our compensation. Finally! I always hated it took half a million people dying to prove we’re worthwhile.

But now the dust somewhat settles. Remote workers return to the office, mask mandates are removed, school is somewhat normal operating procedure, and Johnny Q. Public (or politician or administrator) remembers what they’re paying the exhausted frontline, while conveniently forgetting what brought us to this point. Why are we surprised?!

Why are we surprised that the people who complain about the wait at the drive-thru, while thoroughly refusing to work at the drive-thru for minimum wage, are the same people complaining about the wait at their local ER?! They’re not gonna wait tables for pennies anymore than they’ll hold life and death in their hands for what you make as a loan officer or insurance underwriter (who make about the same as a nurse with 15-20 years experience)! In other words, they want to ridicule the fast food workers and waitresses who refuse to serve them for a wage you can’t even pay your increasing rent and grocery bill with, calling them lazy and entitled. In the same vein, they want to call us money-hungry, accuse us of taking advantage of a national staffing shortage, when all we want is to finally be recognized for the pain we’ve endured.

While most everyone stayed home in pj’s, we went to work. When people feared an unknown virus, we faced it head on. When you wanted our advice, you took it, but when it contradicted your politics, you shamed us. When there are not enough servers at your favorite restaurant, you end up having to wait a long time. Inconvenience. When there are not enough servants at the hospital bedside, your lifesaving healthcare is delayed. Death. Death that we will be held liable for. And you are surprised we don’t want a cap on our salary?!

Don’t take something we love and guilt us into killing ourselves physically and mentally for a salary that won’t even begin to dig us out of the legal bills we are crushed under after staffing shortages hasten us to make a mistake. Just don’t.

I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to leave the hospital bedside, the critical care nursing I still love. Even a wage that blessed my family so much, wasn’t enough to compensate me in such an exhausting environment. The thing is, there are a lot of nurses like me, mentally and physically done after these past few years, no matter the compensation.

How do you think it will go if they cutback the pay for those who remain?!

Will any of us be surprised when there are no bedside nurses left?

Chew on that.

No One Understands What Nurses are Going Through

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“God’s got this.”

“He holds you in the palm of His hand.”

“None of this is a surprise to God.”

“Heaven, help us.”

These are the sentiments spoken in response to what critical care nurses like myself are seeing, and while these comments are absolutely true in my book, they don’t quite give me the reassurance I’m hoping for. It’s not that the thoughts and prayers aren’t appreciated; because, they are! My spirit thrives on them, and His strength makes all things possible. But after hearing the well-meant words of others, especially after a brutal day, it occurred to me what the human side of me really wants.

I want people to understand.

I can’t really blame them, though. Other than my spouse, I’m usually pretty nondescript when it comes to my day. When asked how it’s going during a pandemic, we’ll use bland words like “hard” or “bad.” Perhaps even “exhausting.” Yet those simple syllables say little to what’s really going on. I’m not sure if it’s too painful to rehash or just easier to say less. I think, for many nurses, after having close acquaintances, or even family members, act over the past year and a half like Covid is not a big deal, it makes you place a wall around yourself. To see folks neglect simple things like masks, or to chastise vaccines and science, it makes you crawl inside a hole. Then, later, when you need someone to understand how you’re feeling, they don’t.

They don’t understand.

Other than my spouse, and a few family and friends I’m comfortable enough to share the intimate aspects of my day, no one understands the pain of what I see. Deep down, I don’t want them to. I don’t want that for anyone. But sometimes, I just wish I could open a curtain into my ICU for the world to see. I think we wouldn’t have another record-breaking surge going on if I could. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like crying, like I did yesterday, all alone in my angst. Even when the tears don’t come, because I’m too afraid to let them loose, worried that I won’t be able to rein them back in.

As it stands, in lieu of a magic window, you’re left with the fact that no one understands, unless they’ve been behind the curtain with you.

Words like “hard“ don’t accurately depict what it’s like to watch people slowly die of a virus that takes away their ability to breathe. “Bad” isn’t adequate to describe the fear in their eyes of dying with a feeling of cruel suffocation.

When you hear the “numbers are going up,” you don’t see the numbers I see going down. The oxygen saturation numbers that keep alarming too low to oxygenate the blood and sustain life. They don’t tell you on the news (no matter the network) what it feels like to watch a person turn gray, and blue, and purple. They don’t describe the feeling of your hands when ribs crack beneath them during CPR, no more than they tell about the hopeless feeling in your heart when a family member asks you over the phone if the patient is getting better.

I’ve never fought such a losing battle, and it’s hard to put that into words. When you’re in the business of healing, Critical Care Covid doesn’t play by the rules, and it just ends up feeling like a bad luck streak that won’t break. Does anyone understand how hard that is on us?!

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that personally my heart is broken. It’s excruciating watching people suffer. It’s beyond demoralizing when the majority don’t get better. I’m angry at people who ignore the suffering of others. I’m pissed that this is still happening! I’m frustrated at staffing problems, and I totally understand why nurses are fleeing the bedside in droves.

The thing is, I can write out all of the above, and most people still won’t understand. Not totally. Until you live it, until you can’t unsee the things you wish you had not seen, and until you spend your off days in a depressed daze, despite your best efforts, you’ll never understand. For your sake, I’m glad you don’t.

The Broken Heart of Nursing After a Pandemic

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Well, I guess that’s it, huh? CDC said we can go without masks (to the vaccinated), and you see businesses everywhere taking down their “masks required” signs. Disney World is taking advantage of our good numbers in the U.S., and while I’m just as excited as anybody to return to a normal, pre-covid world, I’m also having a hard time.

When mask mandates fall, plexiglass partitions are taken down, and social distancing requirements are slackened, it doesn’t just usher in the happy feelings of going back to the good ole days like I would hope. You see, it also feeds the wrong fires, and it perpetuates bad theory.

Who doesn’t know someone who thinks COVID-19 was a political ploy?! Like, I could probably count on both hands, and have to take off my shoes too, to total the Facebook friends who are certain the pandemic was an attempt at government control of its people; without them even noticing that a lot of the behavior in 2020 proved maybe a little government overreach was necessary. But that’s another topic. No wonder the Podcast I listened to earlier called social media “Satan’s cesspool.”

Point is, as the pandemic blows over, the chance of forgetting its seriousness flies away like the wind as well. It’s easier to lessen the virus when it’s not affecting anyone you know. When it’s a distant, news story from India, it’s fairly simple to blame the Democrats for going overboard to keep people safe. Heck, you could even believe COVID-19 was never really a big deal. Except… it was. To me, it was.

I am a critical care nurse, and in the year 2020 I experienced the worst year of my nursing career. I would even go so far as to say it was worse than my time in the military, in a post 9/11 world, watching scores of young men medevaced to my facility with only one limb remaining. At least the brave soldiers I saw in my stateside care lived. Not so with the Covid pandemic.

I personally saw hundreds in our facility’s care die. Not just old people, or people with multiple health problems. I especially remember the mother of three children who was younger than me. I tried to warn her she might die if she didn’t lay in a prone position. At the time, it was the thing that seemed to help those patients the most. The next day, she was intubated. A week later, she was gone. It was like that for way too many patients this past year.

I watched my coworker dress out in PPE to hug her husband goodbye before he died. I cried on the phone with more family members than my heart could take. I saw the hope go out of otherwise strong men’s eyes. Each day they fought in vain to breathe, the light in their eyes dimmed more and more. It was a fight they couldn’t win. And sadly it was a fight the nursing community couldn’t win either.

As a nurse, my job is to make people better. In my twenty years of nursing, I did a two year stint in Hospice Nursing. Y’all, I loved it. It was extremely rewarding to care for patients and families during a difficult end of life experience. I was able to prepare, support, and comfort them. All that to say, it wasn’t the morgue being too full to take any more bodies that got to me. As a nurse, I can handle patients dying. The problem with the past year was, they all died. If you came into the intensive care unit, you were only leaving in a bag! Back to the counting fingers… I can count on one hand how many patients got to leave my critical care unit alive. That’s bad odds.

Nursing care is about helping. No one wanted to die of COVID-19! They wanted to live! And when we became (like) Hospice nurses to patients and families who had not requested those services, it was debilitating to the morale. Y’all, I still have PTSD-like response from 2020. My actions, even now, as the virus statistics improve, are impacted negatively by the trauma I experienced watching patients die, over and over, every shift, day after day.

I am a woman of faith. When churches began to open back up, I didn’t take my family back. I had seen too much! It wasn’t fear winning out over my faith. It was my trauma response. But you haven’t heard the worst part. I still haven’t taken my family back to church, but it’s no longer the corona virus that whispers to me to stay at home. It’s a whole other form of PTSD. It’s the response of people that has given me a lasting trauma. With the vaccine, time, and herd immunity, I can move past COVID-19. But the careless words, hateful attitudes, and selfishness of some, fellow Christians has created a lasting trauma in my life. It’s hard for me to share in fellowship with people who laugh at a virus that made 2020 the worst year of my life as an RN. I’ve just been worshipping God at home with my husband. God, my spouse, and my fellow critical care nurses seem to be some of the few who understand why my heart was broken into pieces this past year.

*Insert sigh.

I’m glad we are returning to a life without a pandemic. I’m happy to see my patients transfer out of critical care, and on their way to recovery again! I want my children to play with other kids, and I want my loving husband to go back to striking up friendships with strangers. I miss his outgoing self! I think these things are possible. I know they are! But then there are the things that I don’t think can return to before.

I can’t forget the way people spoke so nonchalantly and uncaring about the death of >550,000 American citizens, or over 3 million people worldwide! I watched friends be more concerned with having to wear a piece of paper over their face for twenty minutes of shopping than they were for the possible health outcome statistically of their neighbors over 65 years of age. Citizens worried more about their “personal rights,” as they perceived them, than they were staving off the spread of a disease that had healthcare workers going beyond the possibility of what they could do. I remember reaching a wall of what I felt I could handle as a nurse in 2020. Then we busted right through that mother, to the point I recall in tears asking a coworker, “is this real life?!”

We were drowning, and no one cared! Our patients were dying, and no one cared! And now, things are getting better, causing some folks to say COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal. And no one seems to care!! Except me, my coworkers, and the families of the 3 million dead people. We seem to care. We seem to remember the past year wasn’t just a political ploy to oust Trump, reform gun control, or God-forbid, raise gas prices.

I don’t guess I have much more in me to say right now than that. It’s exhausting and it’s heartbreaking. Just when I think my heart is healing, callous words step on the broken pieces.

My husband told me earlier, “Brie, people just don’t know. They’re ignorant.”

To which I replied, “I wish I was too. I would rather be ignorant to the reality of a pandemic than have gone through what I did as a nurse in Covid Critical Care in 2020.”

So, if you see a nurse friend with a distant, haunted look while you discuss the government’s mishandling of the pandemic, try and understand why. It was so much more than you’ll ever know to those it touched personally. I do believe politicians play circumstances like a fiddle, and I know things were and are still mishandled in regards to COVID-19, but we have to be bigger than that. We, as human beings, have to rise above politics and the noise of this world to care compassionately about one another. If anything could return to normal after a pandemic, maybe it could be that.

I Cannot Get Lost When I’ve Already Been Found

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I was driving home from work last night when a thought occurred to me. I suppose that happens when you’re driving down a palm-tree-lined street, still getting used to new road signs, and realize, ‘yep, I really live here.’ Such is the life, I guess, of those led by the Spirit. You wonder, “how did I get here,” and you marvel at how far you’ve come. How did life shift so grandly, and how did it change so much? It feels good. Peace like a river.

When I told my husband last summer, “I feel like God told me we should move to Fort Myers,” his response may have been surprising to some.

Without hesitation he replied, “ok. Sounds good.”

And that was that. I started looking for another job, despite the fact that I loved the one I had. I started looking for a new place to live. I started looking at health insurance options, since I’d be losing ours with a job change, and I withdrew from college. I wouldn’t have the time to pursue an advanced degree like I planned. But mostly, I just prayed.

“Lord, lead us. Make the way.”

Looking back, I don’t think I can simplify my spouse’s response as just trusting me. I mean, I know he trusts my ability to hear from the Holy Spirit, but placing his calm, collected demeanor to it all in one tiny box would truly negate the point of how we live life like we do. In the same line of thinking, I cannot place my own decision to move forward so surely on the confidence in my ability to “hear God’s voice.” Indeed, stepping out in faith has little to do with self, and so much more to do with Jesus.

You see, while my husband trusted my discernment, more so he trusted our Savior. And while I believed in my spiritual ears to hear from the Lord, I would be a crumbling mess if that was all I had to rest on. My ability would have been sinking sand, and my spouse’s faith in me would have been a mudslide. But Jesus? Well, that we could count on solidly.

When I told my husband I felt led to uproot our happy existence in the city and community we had come to love, his response was based on trust in Christ, not me. When I realized I was going to step out with what God whispered to my heart as I sat alone with Him on a balcony at the beach, it felt kinda crazy. I mean, was I really about to suggest we change everything based on a still, quiet voice, that might not even be God?! Yet, I felt peace. Something that should have seemed crazy and unconventional to me, felt like the best decision there was. So, I took that first step. I knew I didn’t take it alone.

The point is, it wasn’t me that my husband so much trusted, but rather God’s plan for us. Being the chill, relaxed dude he is, he knew that if this wasn’t God’s will, then it wouldn’t work out. A new job wouldn’t come, or living arrangements would fall through. Financial constraints would arise, or roadblocks would occur. Where God leads, He makes a way. So, as we began to make small steps of faith, the Lord opened big doors. Jobs fell in my lap, and blessings poured out into our hands. No roadblocks, just paved roadways.

I’ve discovered over the past few years that following the Lord isn’t as hard as I assumed. It’s all about being still, listening, and then walking. It’s about waiting, and then stepping through the door that opens. It’s not about what I think I should do for God, but rather what He designs to happen. I don’t have to try so hard to live for Him; I just have to live my life in Him. Abiding in His presence. It’s about understanding that despite my best intentions, I’m likely going to mess things up. But more importantly, despite my missteps, the Lord will straighten my path. I’ve discovered that in this life I don’t have to always know where it’s going, as long as I understand who leads me. I cannot get lost when I’ve already been found.

PTSD in Nursing

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Last night my family and I drove to pickup dinner. I had asked my husband if he still felt uncomfortable taking our young daughters into a public restaurant, and he had been quick to say, “yeah, I don’t want to do that.”

The numbers had gone down, but that did little to change the routine we had carried since April. I’m very honest with my spouse about my work, and as such, he suffered from the same problem I did. We knew too much. There was no way in hell we could be blissfully ignorant, and I don’t mean that offensively. I truly wish I could forget this year.

As we pulled up to the restaurant to get our curbside pickup I noticed the large group of people sitting outdoors. The tables weren’t spaced like they had been just a month prior, and people milled about inches from other groups, laughing, smiling, not a mask in sight.

“That doesn’t look like continued social distancing to me,” I said to my spouse, pointing towards the outdoor dining.

The thing was, I didn’t want to be the social distancing police! I didn’t want to see pictures of church gatherings on Facebook and wonder why no one wore a mask. I didn’t want to cringe at friends starting to gather again, throw parties, and enjoy life. I didn’t want to be wary of strangers. I didn’t want to worry about my daughters drifting over to play with some new kids at the pool. I wanted everything the way it used to be, but I couldn’t for the life of me forget the past four months. I just couldn’t.

For nurses and other healthcare professionals who have been in hotspot areas of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we’ve received injuries that are invisible. We’re nursing wounds no one can see, and the scars we carry are still raised and angry. So while a large part of society has basically forgotten a pandemic was here, nurses are still trying to catch their breath.

I think of a skittish cat, jumping with shackles raised at every tiny sound. I think of someone who has been abused, how they’re always suspicious for when the next hand will be raised to harm them. It wasn’t fear that griped me, but rather an awareness of what the virus could do. For so many people COVID-19 was like a really bad cold, or maybe the flu, but for the hundreds of patients I had seen in an inpatient, critical care setting, it was a death sentence. All that people with no hands-on experience could say about the virus was that its mortality rate wasn’t that high, but you know who I never heard say that? Those of us at the bedside the past four months, sweating profusely in our respirators, while we pumped aggressively on someone’s chest to help their heart restart. The reason you didn’t hear that from us? Because 90% (or more) of those patients did not live. Last I knew, our hospital had tried to save over 200 people, without success. We did everything humanly possible. The virus is that bad. For the families of those two hundred and something lost, statistics for survival rate meant very little. For those of us who had cared for them, it meant even less.

So, here we are with case numbers declining, but I still don’t feel comfortable allowing my children to go to a restaurant or play with other kids in the neighborhood. To me, it’s life and death, and until someone can tell me what makes one person just get a scratchy throat, and the next guy (with similar age and health) be unable to survive, I must remain the way I am. I cannot help it. My poor husband, who has seen my defeat amidst so much death, he cannot help it either. We’re still over here self-isolating, wearing masks in public, and social distancing when we do get out.

Today my husband said, “I hope they’re wrong. I mean, it doesn’t have to get bad again, right?!”

You see, the healthcare field, based on their knowledge and models, has their own predictions for the next few months. Those of us knee-deep in the muck of this novel virus are like the skittish cat I mentioned. We’re waiting for flu season 2020. It will be like the two tropical storms converging, but when COVID couples with flu, it will be a level 5 we fear. I don’t want to listen to projections, but I try to be realistic.

Y’all, I don’t know if it will ever be the same. I don’t know if I will ever be the same. I’m so aware of germ transmission at this point, I’m surprised the skin on my hands isn’t falling off from hand sanitizer and washing them. Today I let my daughters play with two little girls at the public pool. Then I spent the next twenty minutes praying silently for God’s hedge of protection around them, worried I had made the wrong decision. I don’t want to be that mom, but I’m that nurse. I just can’t seem to be any other way.

I’m not alone, y’all. I cannot unsee the frightened look in a patient’s eyes before we stuck a breathing tube down his throat. I cannot forget the fact that although I wanted him to live, he didn’t. I can’t erase the images of the handful of critical care patients who did leave my floor alive, but did so forty pounds lighter, unable to do the things they had done prior to being a COVID survivor, some with holes in their neck to keep breathing. I think back to when I was active duty military after 9/11. At some point, as we continued to receive soldiers from The War on Terror, I grew so very tired of seeing young men (boys, really) with only one limb remaining, or their face mangled. I just wanted the war to end. I think your civilian healthcare workers of 2020 are feeling much the same. We’re tired, we’re anxious, and we’re depressed. We’re overly protective of our families, but we’re also happy to be alive. We’re in need of a break, and even though the case numbers are on the downtrend for now, we don’t really believe the end is even close. We can’t catch a break, and our patients can’t catch their breath. It’s an ugly scene for bedside nursing, and so many of us will never be the same.

When you say your prayers tonight, try and remember your frontline workers. We feel like we’ve been forgotten. And although we’d keep doing what we do even without accolades or good vibes, I personally covet your prayers for my team. This year has been traumatic, and I don’t think it’s something we can ever forget.

Check On Your Nurse Friends. We Are Not Ok.

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I took a survey from my employer today, and as I went through the questions I was surprised by how easily I could answer one way or another. It was a survey for how the pandemic, COVID-19 was affecting us, and as I clicked each bubble I understood even more just how much things had changed. One question that stood out to me asked if I thought about work more when at home. The fact was I had always been proud of my ability to leave work at work. I am an extremely compassionate person, but after twenty years in healthcare I had learned that to keep my sanity intact, patient care needed to stay at the bedside. It would be there waiting when I returned. But today, as I pondered the question on the survey, I realized that had changed. Everything had changed.

It had really started to hit me, the weight of it all, a few nights ago. I sat in bed the night before work and I prayed. I felt so down, and the fact was I had for weeks. There was nothing wrong going on in my life. I wasn’t financially stressed. My marriage was amazing, my children healthy and adorable. I had absolutely nothing to be upset about, yet I was. The only out of place factor I could pinpoint? COVID-19.

Years ago I had come to a place in my nursing career where I absolutely loved my job. I considered patient care to be a privilege, and even on tough days I considered it a wonderful vocation. It was a calling, and I carried the task with a smile. This past week I noticed an unwelcome feeling coming over me. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in many years. It was dread. I was dreading the return to the critical care bedside. How could I dread something I loved so much? I cried out to God to bring back my joy for the field.

When I sat in bed praying to feel better I realized that all this was hitting me harder than I thought. I realized that even though I thought I was doing ok, I really wasn’t. Even though I thought I could handle stress well, I don’t guess I had ever experienced stress like this.

Typically, nursing is about healing. A patient comes in sick, and we make them better. That’s not COVID-19.

And yes, I had experienced lots of death and dying. It was part of the job. So it wasn’t the people dying that got me. It was the fact that most of them seemed to be dying. The ones that were in Critical Care, anyway. The prognosis of these people was horrible, and when you have to break that to a daughter who can’t talk to her mom, or even see her, it’s depressing.

I was used to elderly and debilitated patients dying, but this was different. I was seeing people my age, younger, or just a few years older, and they were not doing well at all.

Nursing had always been a career where I had to be careful with infectious disease. I frequently encountered illnesses I could pick up and take home if I didn’t use proper protection or hygiene, but this was different. It was so new, and I watched the information available change day by day. One minute it’s airborne, the next droplet. One day the CDC says one thing, the next day, something else. The suggested PPE (personal protective equipment) changed faster than I could keep up, and it became this constantly evolving situation. I sadly knew that each time I came to work things would be different than when I left.

Do I need to shower and change clothes at work? Is it in my hair? The questions I had to ask myself. Is a Level 1 mask good enough, or is a Level 3 safer? Wait, now you’re saying it’s aerosolized and I should definitely wear googles? Why didn’t anyone tell me that yesterday?

Am I bringing bad stuff home to my children? They’re so little still. The fact that our government and healthcare system was treating the response to this unlike anything I had ever encountered only added to my thoughts. I mean, your president says everyone needs to stay home. Except you. You need to run into it head on! Unless your patient’s heart stops. Then, don’t run; put on your PPE first. It was going against everything we had ever done as lifesavers!

Everyone was watching us. People whose sole job was to make sure we were protecting ourselves properly. And while I appreciated the effort, it also made you feel pretty odd. I mean, what kind of crazy crap makes hoards of upper management and administration watch your every move? What exactly were we dealing with? The answer to that seemed to change every day!

I never felt so helpless. Everything we tried seemed to be in vain. They typically weren’t getting better. One week this was the go-to drug of choice, the next week something else, and the next week the surprising news that none of it would improve outcomes. In fact, it might make it worse.

It didn’t matter that the mask or respirator hurt my face, left bruises and sores, or that it left me feeling drowsy and cloudy headed after so many hours on straight. It didn’t change the fact that I was paranoid about the seal, worried that the tiny virus could somehow get through.

The stress made me become the type of person I didn’t want to be, short tempered and easily frustrated. The high acuity of the severely critical patients forced me to become the kind of nurse I didn’t want to be, hurried, harried, just struggling to keep them alive, keep my head above the water. My shift would end and I’d be sure I had missed something, which drove me crazy, but at least they had lived through my shift. They would likely die after I left. The prognosis was always poor.

Seeing the fear in their eyes, or hearing the words, “am I going to die,” remembering those words after they were gone. Holding their hand, offering comforting, muffled words, but knowing you were no adequate substitute for their loved ones.

Speaking of loved ones. We had those too, and just this week my nine year old said sadly, “Mom, I don’t want you to go to work. I’m worried you’ll get sick.”

But then I also had loved ones who had no idea. As I was leaving work today it occurred to me that not many of my family members had called to check on me. It wasn’t their fault; they didn’t know. I had not told them the toll this pandemic was having on me, and that’s when I knew I needed to. I see Facebook posts of people who don’t even think the pandemic is real, or that it’s like the flu. They have the privilege of not knowing how hard this is hitting me and my coworkers. I don’t normally try to play a pity party or seek attention, but I realized that a lot of people just didn’t know. They didn’t know that we’re not ok.

I have spoken with my coworkers and peers, and all the ones I have questioned are feeling the same pressing weight as me. They’re tired, worn thin, worried, beyond the typical stress of saving lives on a daily basis. It’s beyond skipping lunch and bathroom breaks to keep someone from dying. That’s just a regular Thursday. This, this is different. This is harder.

I don’t know the answers, and I don’t know if things will ever be the same. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to make it better for your nursing friends. You can pray. You can send us a message, drop off some toilet paper, or even just a long-distance hug. We need so many hugs right now, and social distancing is messing that all up. The typical outlets aren’t available to decompress, or the ways we deal with stress are not allowed. Nurses have the added weight of homeschooling, when that’s not something they are used to, or a spouse out of work. We’re dealing with all the same stress and aggravation as the rest of the population, but also the additional stress of facing this monster up close and personal.

We can’t pretend it’s not happening or busy ourselves with conspiracy theories. We’re too preoccupied with telling ourselves, “it’s not your fault. You did everything you could do.”

This is all I can write right now. There’s more, so much more, but I am exhausted after a day of the above. I need to lay down so I can wake up and do it again. See, that’s the great thing about nurses. We are not ok, but you’ll still find us when you need us. We’ll be in the clinics, ER’s, and units ready to do all we can do for those who need us. We’ll worry about us later.

How I Fell in Love With Nursing. Again.

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First love is easy, isn’t it? With stars in your eyes and a naive nature, you swing headfirst and heart-strong into the relationship. You have dreams for the future, the butterflies for excitement to spur you forward, and even a bit of healthy hesitancy to keep you honest. But somewhere between that first date (or shift in the case of nursing) and eventual broken expectations, you end up feeling betrayed. It’s nothing like you hoped it could be. You end up disappointed, likely broken-hearted, and sadly, if your experience was especially harsh, guarded and skeptical for any silver lining that might exist up ahead. Sound familiar?

A profession you can truly love isn’t that different from a romantic relationship. It’s something that gives your life a new purpose, a reason to hope, excitement, and the ability to get better at it as you go along. It’s the chance to think of someone other than yourself, but like any relationship, the one with your career can become strained. I’ve been in the medical field for 20 years now, and I think I’ve experienced every stage of the process. I mean, if Nursing was Dante’s Inferno, I probably transversed through every circle. Y’all, I fell out of love with it, and it took purposeful determination to make my way back into my partner’s good graces. At one point, I think I hated it. Just being brutally honest here.

That first year was something, am I right? Fear, panic, but somehow an exciting adrenaline rush, a pride that I’ve discovered you can’t let slip away. I was proud to be a nurse. I was proud of my vocation, and I was proud of the hard work it took to get me there. I was proud of that R, and of that N, and for a while no one could take that from me. But then came the bad apples. Damn, if they don’t ruin the barrel.

Somewhere between holding an elderly woman’s hand and double charting for the billionth time, my heart started to harden. Do you know the difference between a good nurse and a great nurse? I was always a good nurse. I took care of my patients, and I got the job done. I was honest (for the most part), and I did no harm (that I’m aware of). I smiled at my patients’ faces, and I even meant about 80% of what I said. This will sound so harsh to the layman, but my fellow nurses will understand. It’s not easy giving all of yourself with little to nothing in return. I mean, yeah, you get the paycheck, but that even seems paltry in the face of preventing death or giving up Christmas with your family. So, it becomes a job. A thing you do, day in and day out. I can even recall telling my husband I felt stuck. Lord, help me, I did. I could think of no other “job” where I could work 24 hours, yet get paid for forty hours, while maintaining the best benefits offered in our little city.

I ask again, do you know the difference between a good nurse and a great nurse? A good nurse gets the job done, but a great nurse loves the job they get to do. I guess I had to move from one to get to the other.

All I know is, I entered the field like a young, star-crossed lover, but about a decade into it, I wanted to breakup. I had become disillusioned, and it wasn’t what I thought it could be. Maybe I entered the career thinking I could make so many differences, but I wasn’t open to what could change in me. I became a woman focused on the obstacles before me, and blinded to any blessings scattered throughout. I wasn’t heartless, mind you; I still felt contentment when a patient told me how much my care had meant to them. But those Hallmark moments couldn’t outweigh the injustices I felt. I focused on every single hardship in my field, and I took personally each offense. I allowed the Negative Nancy’s to feed the fire of bitterness inside me, and I assumed every demanding patient canceled out the kind ones. There’s certainly that need for self-care, but I think I came to a place where it was almost always about me.

“Why is this so hard,” I asked, never contemplating for very long how it must be on the other side of the bed.

“What do they expect of me,” I would question angrily, without asking myself what I might give.

I saw my field only as a difficult endeavor, and seldom as a privilege. I carried the weight of a thousand martyrs, except I had forgotten the cause for which I gave myself. I was a good nurse, who did my job, but not a great nurse who loved the opportunity to do it. And I suppose that’s many of us. It’s not that we don’t enjoy what we do; it’s just that sometimes we hate it just as much. That sounds so terrible, when I type it out like that, but if you’ve never held a position where you don’t cry while cleaning the dead body of someone you just hugged that morning, then you may not understand. If you haven’t been punched, kicked, or called the worst of all swear words by someone you’re trying to help, then you won’t get it. If you haven’t cringed over calling someone in a position above you, knowing they will scream at you merely for doing your job, then this may seem like harsh words. If you haven’t felt the anxiety of trying to do the work of two people, while not making a mistake that could cost someone else’s life and your career, then you just won’t have a clue. It’s not easy to carry the weight of so much on tired shoulders, and for many who do, they end up angry and perhaps even resentful for a profession they once loved so much.

Back to the relationship bit, it’s as if the marriage is falling apart, and you don’t want a divorce, but you can’t look at his socks balled up on the floor another day or you might snap. I guess sometimes, when you realize you don’t love them like you used to, you have to take it back to the beginning. You have to remember the first time you saw them, that first date, or first, tender kiss. The spark is still there. You just gotta know how to stoke it.

I recall sitting in a computer class taking a critical care course, and I was digging it. Us Critical Care folks, we love all that medical stuff! Sitting there, I knew I loved the knowledge. I loved the dynamics. I loved the process. I loved the people. I loved making a difference in people’s lives. I loved nursing. I did. It was time to act like it.

Back when my husband and I were just dating, I remember we had been off again, on again, at one point. I had found out some stuff, and each of us had been idiots. We loved each other, we knew that, but we were kinda just coasting along, existing as a couple. Like, maybe involved, but not committed entirely to the future of it. Well, anyway, I remember standing in the card aisle on Valentine’s and I had found the perfect, mushy card for him, when suddenly God smacked me upside the head.

It was like, God said, “Brie, if you’re going to give that to him, you need to mean it.”

And I was like, dang, you’re right. I love him. I really do. We can work through this.

And we did. Every day since our relationship got better, and even now, each day is better than the last. I guess, I had to come to a place in my nursing career that was similar. I loved it, but I had to start acting like it. I had to do more than just show up. I had to get invested. I couldn’t focus on my husband’s faults, any more than I could deny my own. And I couldn’t selfishly fixate on what nursing took out of me. I had to start giving of myself more. I had to see through clear eyes. If you focus on a stain, that’s all you see. What you should look at is the fact that the fabric is still good. It can be washed. Nursing was still good. I think my vision of it had just become tainted.

My career truly began to change when I focused on the opportunity to provide care, the privilege of meeting people at their darkest hour, and leading them back into the light. I threw off sympathy and instead embraced empathy. I put myself in my patient’s shoes. Heck, even the administrators’ shoes. I saw my occupation as the ministry it was, my chance to care for the hurting, and to help those in need. I didn’t face the relationship with what I could gain, but what I could give. I didn’t focus on what wrong was being done to me, but rather what good I could sow into it. Y’all, I fell in love all over again, and it wasn’t because the object of my affection was perfect, but because it gave me purpose, passion, and a sense of fulfillment. Was it still hard, at times? Yes! But beyond that it was good. In fact, it was great. And then I realized, I was great too.

How to Find Peace in Patient Care

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Not long ago I encountered a new nurse with multiple questions, and while I adored the fact she sought answers to the things she did not know, I also sensed a self doubt within her. I totally got it. I saw myself in her wide, startled eyes, and even fifteen years later I could easily recall the hesitancy prevalent in being a new nurse. I remembered well the fear, worry, and realistic concern that I might do something wrong. I mean, it’s true. Hastily made mistakes could kill people. But I also could remember the irrational fear I had held, the anxiety that I would mess up even the things I knew how to do. For years that irrational worry had made nursing far more difficult than it needed to be for me. And though a whopping, healthy dose of attention to detail and awareness could save your license, as well as a person’s life, one step over the line into performance anxiety and bedside-care doubt could tire you quickly. No one could survive the burnout of that particular feeling. I saw that fear in this new nurse’s eyes.

As a newer nurse you have a choice to learn from your mistakes and press on, or you can crumble under defeat. You have the choice to build on your knowledge and gain much-needed confidence. I’ve seen the other side of the spectrum, mind you, as I’m sure most of us have. It’s that overly confident, cocky new grad who thinks they know everything. They don’t ask questions, and it’s usually the patient who suffers. They teach their incorrect knowledge to the new hires that follow, and safe technique goes out the window. So, I’m all for the pursuit of knowledge, asking questions, and taking an extra pair of eyes along. Heck, after twenty years in healthcare I still ask questions and seek new answers daily. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about doubting the knowledge you do have or anxiety over skills you hold under your belt.

This problem of bedside anxiety won’t go for everyone, and if it doesn’t pertain to you then I say, that’s awesome. Truly. Because it sucks. I think it’s the introverted, overthinkers who encounter this problem the most, and it will surefire make you resent your career. I used to be that nervous nurse, but no longer. I found my peace in patient care.

So, here’s what I said to this new nurse when she spoke anxiously about the continued stress of making a mistake in nursing.

You have no control over out of control things.

And that’s the truth of it, my friends. I used to be one of those people who desired control over all the things! I think most critical care nurses have that desire within them. I wanted everything just so-so, my ducks in a row, and my plans laid out. Basically, I desired a Mary Poppins kinda day, everything practically perfect, and anyone who’s nursed for like five minutes knows that ain’t happening. But it wasn’t just that. I also put too much pressure on the control I had over a patient’s outcome. And, yeah, while my performance could positively or negatively affect my patient, my ability to do well couldn’t stop someone from checking out to the great beyond. Somewhere around my tenth code, where the patient didn’t make it, I realized this.

I don’t care if you knock out your compressions like an ACLS guru, if a patient’s heart is tired of pumping, they will probably die.

I don’t care if you give every medicine correctly, checking allergy lists and the five rights, if a patient is too far gone to respond to the treatment ordered, it won’t matter.

It doesn’t matter if you give the best Diabetic education and insulin administration teaching on the planet. If a patient wants to chug Mountain Dew like it’s the air they breathe, they’ll be back next month in DKA.

It doesn’t matter if you provide the most encouraging and uplifting advice to the addict, you may find out they’re dead next week. I’ve had this happen.

It doesn’t matter if you provide the best care in the whole hospital, certain families will still complain.

I don’t care if you do everything right, catch every mistake before it happens, and think three steps ahead for your patient’s best outcome. If it’s their time, then it’s their time.

It’s not you. It’s not me. You can’t control an uncontrollable situation.

For me, I had to realize that I can only do what I can only do. I can’t get everything done. I won’t check all the boxes administration wants me to check. I can’t place myself in two rooms at once, no matter how much my charge nurse may wish it was so. I can’t control what a patient’s family does when I leave the room, and I can’t change what a person does when they wheel off my unit. I can’t save everyone. Sometimes because they don’t want saving, but most of the time it’s because healthcare is bigger than me. Life and death is bigger than me. Destiny, God’s will, or whatever you personally call it, is bigger than us all. We can only do what we can only do.

We come in and do the best we can. We work with what we’re given, which often times is less than we need. We do the absolute best we can, and to quote my favorite work-husband of all time (love you, Terry), we try and “leave em better than we found em.” But then we just gotta let go; let go of this idea that we hold life and death in our hands. I mean, yeah, how I titrate those three vasopressor drips can mean the difference between life and death for my patient! And giving the correct med or wrong one will have good versus bad outcomes. It’s my keen eye that catches a potential problem before it becomes a real problem, and that makes me feel very good. Yet I can’t keep bad from happening if it’s gonna happen. I can do my best, but that’s all I can do.

In nursing we hold much responsibility. As we’ve seen in the news, our mistakes can be costly, to more than just ourselves. That’s why we keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep trying hard. What we don’t do is fear. Fear, worry, and anxiety have no place at the bedside. Fear and anxiety will tell you that something bad might happen. Realistic thought will tell you that something bad will happen. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day it will. You can do everything flawlessly and it still will. You have to let go and just do what you know to do, realize that you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll learn from them. Sixteen years ago I failed a clinical exam because I didn’t give my patient up in the chair his call light before I left the room. Do you think I’ve ever forgotten to give a patient their call light since? I haven’t.

You’ll mess up, miss something, and forget plenty. Personally, each day before I work I pray in the shower. I ask God to “help me hear His voice and do no harm.” It has worked well for me thus far, but I also know I had trouble hearing that small, steady voice in my heart until I let go of the fear that I wouldn’t. I had to become confident in where God had placed me as a career, and each day I go to whatever floor and whatever assignment with that same peace. I’m going where I need to be, with the patients I need to have.

I can’t control everything that happens at the bedside, but I can control my own thoughts. After all, it’s my thoughts that drive me.